Daily Commodity Market Analysis -- 08/17/2026

CONTRACT	CLOSE	NET CHANGE
Sep '26 Corn	464 1/2	+5 1/2
Dec '26 Corn	489	+5 3/4
Sep '26 Beans	1201	+23 1/4
Nov '26 Beans	1216 1/4	+23 3/4
Sep '26 Chi Wheat	675	+0 1/4
Sep '26 KC Wheat	758	+3 3/4
Dec '26 Cotton	85.52	+0.72
Crude Oil (spot futures)	84.10	+2.61
US Dollar Index (spot futures)	99.47	-0.10
Dow Jones (spot futures)	53,509	-269

Daily Glance

The impressive run continues, withs soybeans leading the way on the back of a bullish crush report that showed soyoil stocks falling well below what the trade was looking for. Corn finished higher again as well, with the weekend flooding and the first disappointing numbers out of the crop tour giving it support. Wheat spent the morning under pressure from spread trade against corn before working its way back to finish about where it started.

Widespread flooding dominated the weekend field reports, with corn and soybeans left standing in water across parts of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The hardest hit stretch ran from central Illinois into eastern Ohio, where three to six inches fell on ground that was already saturated and there are reports of lodged and downed corn. We get the first official read on any of it in this afternoon's crop progress report.

The forecast looks friendlier than the weekend was, with the heat that had been threatening the crop now mostly confined to the southern edge of the belt and a cooler, drier pattern behind it that should finally let the wet ground dry out.

Outside markets were led by crude, which added better than two and a half dollars with the Strait of Hormuz still shut and the US looking to tighten sanctions on Iran. Equities backed off and the dollar eased a touch.

Key Points/Developments:

Technicals: Dec corn added 5 3/4 cents to 489, running up into the July highs near 492 and stopping there. A close above that zone opens the door to 500, then the one year high near 506. Support falls back to 480, then 472 to 474, then the 50 day average near 457.

Nov beans did the real work, gaining 23 3/4 cents to 1216 1/4 and clearing last Tuesday's spike high near 1199 with room to spare, which puts them into the fresh territory we said a close above there would open up. Support now comes back to 1199, then 1183 to 1185, then 1174 to 1176, the 50 day average.

Spreads: The Sep/Dec corn spread widened slightly to 24 1/2 cents from 24 1/4 Friday. The Sep/Nov bean spread widened to 15 1/4 cents from 14 3/4, new crop outperforming old crop today, a flip from what we saw at the end of last week.

Weather: TStorm upgraded both corn and soybeans to Neutral from Slightly Unfavorable in Sunday night's report, reversing the downgrade it made Friday, and left everything unchanged again this morning. Winter wheat stays at Neutral, where it has been. The upgrade came from less heat and more rain in the forecast going forward, though the report is clear that roughly 15 percent of the corn and soybean crop is already too wet.

A series of cool fronts moves across the Corn Belt every few days into late month, leaving most corn and soybeans seasonable to slightly cool, while an upper level high holds strong heat over the southern 10 to 15 percent. Storms fire as the first front comes through Tuesday and Wednesday, but the fronts behind it run into much drier air, which should limit how much falls late in the week.

The last 15 days have been the wettest for corn and soybeans in any August since 2007, with 15 and 16 percent of each getting at least 300 percent of normal rainfall. Going forward the expectation is a half inch to an inch and a half over the next 15 days, near to below normal, which is what finally gets the wet ground drying.

Markets/Trading Implications

Following the surprise cuts to yield in last week's reports, this has turned into a run of steady buying, and both corn and beans suddenly find themselves back near their July highs. We have talked for some time about how, with where ending stocks sit, any real risk of a cut to production would get premium added back in a hurry, and that is exactly what we are watching play out now.

Add in the technical support, with each market back over all of its major moving averages and through the pivot points we have been pointing to, and here we are. For now we continue to watch the charts and the weather forecast.

Crop tours will dominate the headlines this week. We will pass along anything worth passing along, but as we seem to say every year, it is our opinion that the Pro Farmer tour gets far too much attention and credit for what it actually tells us about a crop this size.

We do need to move the last bit of our old crop and will likely get that done in the coming days. On new crop we are tempted to get above 40 percent here, but with the trend pointed higher and talk of a corn carryover under 1.5 billion bushels, we do not want to get too far out in front of it.

Beans are where we see the most risk, since a turn to friendlier weather late could pull this recent premium right back out with ending stocks sitting only slightly above 300 million.

Other Notes

• p>NOPA members crushed a record 216.7 million bushels of soybeans in July, up from 214.3 million in June and 21 million above a year ago, though roughly 5 million under what the trade was looking for. The bigger surprise was soyoil stocks falling to 1.36 billion pounds, down 9.4 percent on the month and the lowest since October against a trade estimate of 1.45 billion, with expanding green diesel use expected to pull the seasonal low down toward 1.0 to 1.1 billion.br>br>/p> p> /p>

• p>Export inspections for the week ending August 13 came in at 75.2 million bushels of corn, 9.9 million of beans, and 18.1 million of wheat. The corn figure ran above expectations and keeps the US on a pace that would mean a record 3.5 billion bushel corn export year, and it is worth remembering that monthly Census figures have been running roughly 167 million bushels ahead of the weekly inspections./p>

Static Notes

• ul> li> Commitment of Traders report for trading through Tuesday, August 11, indicated that actively traded funds sold 15k corn, reducing their net long to 167k. They sold 24k soybeans, reducing their net long to 101k. They sold 8k wheat, increasing their net short to 31k.

• In the market days since this report, corn gained 28 1/2 cents, beans gained 47 1/2 cents, and Chicago wheat gained 44 3/4 cents.

Crop Year	2025/26	2026/27	2027/28
Corn	90%	40%	0%
Soybeans	95%	40%	0%
Wheat	100%	40%	0%

Have a nice evening!

Clayton and Taylor