Mark's Market Talk for November 17, 2025

First the positive news. December corn was up 3 cents last week while Jan beans ended the week 7 cents higher. We traded higher all week and then Friday the USDA dropped their November WASDE report. With the government shut down for better than 6 weeks we have not seen much of any official news. The report was a standard do as little as possible report we see too often. The average trade guess was they would lower the 2025 corn yield to 184. They shaved .7 off their September number and made it 186. They did add 100 million to exports, which helped, but the big blow came from a higher old crop stock number that was 207 million bushels higher than the last report. All of this caused the ending stocks to increase 44 million bushels. That was not overly bearish by itself, but the trade was looking for a carryout number closer to 2 billion, not the 2.154 they came up with. Corn closed 11 cents lower on Friday. The only good thing, I think, about a Friday report, the trade has a couple of days to digest it before we start trading again Sunday night. The bean numbers were not bearish as the ending stocks went down 10 million bushels to 290. They cut the yield half a bushel down to a 53-bushel average. A bigger cause of the 22 cent lower board price was what the daily export sales report they released shortly after the WASDE. It showed that during the time the government was shut down, we had bean export sales of 34 million bushels. Of these only 12 million was for China and the rest was for unknown buyers. Added together the 34 million bushels is a far cry from the expected 212 million bushels of sales to China. Going forward beans may have a rough road as world stocks are plentiful, and the South America crop is off to a good start. The high cost of inputs for corn in this country may push more acres into beans this coming year. Prior to Trump and XI meeting we had the cheapest beans in the world as Brazil raised their prices knowing the Chinese were going to buy from them. Since the meeting they have lowered their bean price by a strong 1.00 a bushel to maintain sales. Once again it proves our markets are moved by world events that are normally out of our hands.