When Funds Bet Big Both Ways: What History Says About This Corn Setup

During the last weeks, hedge funds (identified by CFTC as managed money) have built both a very large long position and a very large short position in corn at the same time. That's not the usual one-sided bet. It means that among funds as a group, some are aggressively long and others are aggressively short, with both sides near historic highs simultaneously, rather than the market leaning clearly one direction.

So is this a big deal? We went back through 13 years of weekly CFTC data across corn, soybeans, HRW wheat, and SRW wheat to find out.

It's rare, and corn has only seen it once before. The only other time corn showed this same "big long, big short at once" setup was back in 2018, around this same time of year. That's it, one prior instance in over a decade of data.

Soybeans has never done this. Not once in 13 years have funds gotten this two-sided on beans. Wheat is a different story — both HRW and SRW have flashed this signal repeatedly over the years, so it's clearly more of a wheat pattern than a corn one.

When it does happen, prices have tended to grind higher over the following 1 to 6 months, and that tendency shows up most clearly in the wheat markets, where we have enough history to trust it. Corn's own history is too thin to lean on by itself (again, just one prior case, from 2018), and that signal really only became visible looking back six months later. But when you pool corn together with wheat's much richer track record, the same upward tilt shows up across the board.

That's the pattern in the data: rare, more of a wheat phenomenon than a corn one, and historically followed by more up weeks than down ones, though corn's own sample is thin enough that it's worth watching rather than leaning on in isolation.

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IMPORTANT: These materials are for general information purposes only and are not investment advice or a recommendation or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold any specific financial instrument or to engage in any specific trading strategy. Farmer's Business Netowrk, Inc. operates as an educational entity and is not registered with the CFTC or NFA. The content reflects market commentary and is not tailored to the circumstances of any individual, nor does it constitute individualized investment or trading advice. Questions related to brokerage accounts, margin, or execution should be directed to your broker.