Mark's Market Talk

It does not get much wilder in the grain markets than what we saw last week. We started the week higher as we traded into the USDA report on Wednesday. The consensus was the USDA would lower the corn yield 5 or 6 bushels and the bean yield would be lowered about a bushel. However, the report popped up and the markets immediately headed lower. They did lower the corn yield but only 4 bushels down to a record 177.5 bpa. Then they left the bean yield stand at 52 which really got the bears headed to the door. At the end of trade on Wednesday corn was down 16 and beans were about 43 lower. They also did some demand adjustments in this report that left the bean carryout at 300 million bushels and corn at 2.265 billion bushels, both were higher than pre report estimates. By Wednesday night everyone is trying to figure this all out and make sense of what the report said. Bottom line there was a lot of head scratching going on at the end of the day. Thursday morning, we reversed course and headed higher, and we recaptured everything we lost Wednesday. At the end of the week Dec corn was 19 cents higher while November beans were 53 cents higher. Now the question is, were the USDA numbers right or wrong? We can debate all we want but that was the numbers they gave us. It appears the trade is questioning their accuracy, but we really won’t know until harvest is finished. What we do know is there will be another report in August, and it will include producer surveys that should give us a better idea of what is out there. The pro Farmer tour will take place next month and they too will offer up what they find. So there still is no easy answers, only difficult questions.