USDA Grain Stocks Wow!

The dust has settled after the USDA released the Quarterly Grain Stocks Monday morning at 11:00 am. The corn stocks was the largest surprise at 2.1 billion bushel. That was about 300 million bushel less than the average trade guess or what was "in the market." This means either the USDA over estimated the last quarters corn use or over estimated the 2018 corn crop in the U.S. Corn was up big yesterday and followed through higher today!

Soybean stocks came in at 913 million bushel. That was a little less than the average trade guess but more than double the bean stocks a year ago. However, beans were sharply higher after the report and followed through with gains of about 13 cents a bushel today. Supporting beans was China buying a lot of U.S. beans, even with the Trade War and talk that Chine was buying even more!

It seems like there is another factor supporting both corn and beans that is getting very little publicity. A lot of corn and beans all across the Midwest was planted very late. There are still a lot of questions about planted acres and the prevented plant acres. Maybe the "market" suspects the crop is not as big as many including the USDA think it is?