March corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade closed sharply lower Friday, near the session low, at a bearish weekly low close and at another fresh contract low. Bears still have the solid near-term technical advantage and gained more momentum late last week.
Corn prices are still trading below a five-month downtrend line on the daily bar chart. The next downside price objective for the bears is to push and close prices below solid technical support at $3.50. The bulls’ next upside price objective is to push and close prices above technical resistance at last Friday’s high of $3.78 3/4.
The corn market and the other grain futures markets will continue to be influenced by the key “outside markets” –crude oil, the value of the U.S. dollar and the U.S. stock indexes. Corn will likely be supported on trading days when stock indexes and crude oil are higher while the U.S. dollar is weaker. Conversely, on days when stocks and crude oil are weaker while the U.S. dollar is stronger, the corn futures market will likely see downside selling pressure. This is a classic example of the very real phenomenon of intermarket analysis.
The VantagePoint Intermarket Analysis trading tool (www.TraderTech.com) also suggests the path of least resistance for March corn futures remains to the downside. VantagePoint is a valuable trading tool that employs intermarket analysis to forecast near-term price trends. Intermarket analysis is the study of how markets are inter-related and impact each other’s daily price moves.
The VantagePoint daily bar chart for March corn futures shows the predicted medium-term exponential moving average of typical prices two days ahead (blue line) has just moved below the actual 10-day simple moving average of closes (black line), which is a bearish signal.
Also note on the daily chart for December corn that VantagePoint’s Predicted Neural Index is presently reading 0.00, suggesting still more downside price pressure for March corn in the near term.
When the predicted simple three-day moving average value of typical prices is greater than today’s actual three-day moving average value, the Predicted Neural Index is 1.00, indicating that the market is expected to move higher over the next two days. When the predicted simple three-day moving average value of typical prices is less than today’s actual three-day moving average value, the Predicted Neural Index is 0.00, indicating the market is expected to move lower over the next two days.
The Predicted Neural Index, a proprietary VantagePoint indicator, is either correct or incorrect so its performance can be measured in terms of percent correct to produce the accuracy statistics cited for VantagePoint, which has a predictive accuracy rate of around 80% across a wide range of markets and time spans in ongoing research.
Go here to see FREE recent forecasts of corn and its related markets!
