11/13/26 MIDCO AFTERNOON COMMENTS

Happy Friday the 13th. CBOT ag markets ended the week on a high note Friday, with prices in the green across on the board ahead of what looks to be the first real chilly Midwest weekend of the season. We cited more sellers than buyers as reason for the lower trade Thursday, and will follow suit today by saying it felt like there were simply more buyers than sellers to end the week, with there not really a specific reason to point to for the strength seen throughout the session otherwise. For next week, the next round of Trump-Xi talks on the sidelines of the APEC summit in China are likely to be the focus, but there's also still going to be attention paid obviously to South American weather, but also to the wars that remain ongoing in the Middle East and in the Black Sea region.

Have a great weekend!

🌽 Corn Market Update
The corn market ended the week in green Friday, though it continues to trade inside of Tuesday's report day range as traders understand there are still questions lingering on the demand side of the balance sheet despite supply coming in slightly lower. We've repeated it plenty, but it's important to understand that longer term price direction over at least the next three or four months at this point is really going to be a product of two things - 1) South American production in Brazil and Argentina and related weather; and 2) whether or not China shows back up as a buyer of US corn. Traders are hopeful they know more regarding the latter in another week or so, but there has been no evidence of a resumption of business to this point.

🌱 Soybean Market Update
Both the beans and the products traded in the green to end the week, with newswires pointing to concern over South American weather as reason for the buying. We don't see a whole lot of change in the forecast for Brazil this afternoon, but would instead argue that the buying was maybe chart-based at the 20-day moving average. The week's action has us fairly confident short term seasonal bottoms have been put in for the beans and meal, but would still caution that if rains continue falling through most of the growing regions in the Cerrado over the next four-six weeks, it could lead to somewhat moderate production forecasts seen today being increased a bit, which could then lead to a retest of these lows if nothing new has come about on the demand side to offset it. So long as the Chinese continue to show intention to make good on another 25 MMTs of purchases from the US in 2027, it will be the size of the crop out of Brazil come February/March that drives longer term price direction into next spring's planting season and El Niño to this point simply hasn't had the negative impact many were anticipating.

🌾 Wheat Market Update
Wheat added in a bit of war premium ahead of the weekend Friday, as it seems to be more and more apparent that this week's peace discussions yielded little if anything in terms of progress towards a resolution of the ongoing war. It doesn't matter how many leaders get involved or where they come from, there are fundamental differences between the Russians and the Ukrainians that have been played out in a military setting for more than ten years now (Crimea invasion in 2014), and until those are somehow resolved, the two sides are going to continue attacking each other. As winter settles in and the front-lines stall out, we see the war dragging on at least into next spring, which means disruptions in grain shipping likely linger for at least just as long. ... See MoreSee Less

11/13/26 MIDCO MORNING COMMENTS

Good morning. Think lucky thoughts today. It is snowing here in Bloomington. It is still amazing how many folks are on one email platform and how long it takes to fix an outage. Of course, all of that is above my pay grade. Green on the screen to end the week. Conab issued its update on production this morning. They kept both bean and corn production unchanged at 181.6 MMT and 148 MMT respectively. The USDA is at 186 and 141. Some dry weather concern has started to creep up in northern Brazil, but southern areas remain plenty wet. The effects of El Nino would be greatest along the northern tier of Brazil. Russian/Ukraine talks have mostly ended with no big agreement. They are expected to continue to talk, and it sounds like Europe will continue to be involved. Ukraine unleased a fury of drone attacks on Russia again overnight. Corn sales were very good this morning at 113.4 mbu.. Beans sales were decent at 42.4 mbu. Wheat sales were poor at just 6.7 mbu. November beans expire today. The PPI for Oct. came in at +0.3% over the month prior versus estimates of +0.4%. Based on what we see today, a FED increase is all but assured in December. The index roll ended with very little pressure seen on the nearby corn spread. Another 88 corn certs were cancelled yesterday, the second of two net cancellations in zone 5 this week. The weather forecast looks sunny for the next few days, with rain chances increasing late next week. With the U.S. getting done, on harvest, the weather watching will be full on for South America for the next few months. Once again, we will see if these gains can hold but support looks pretty solid at the early week lows for now. Have a safe day. ... See MoreSee Less