Highlights
The USDA reports were to be released at 11 AM Central Time yesterday. That was when corn started going down and beans began moving higher. Traffic on the USDA website at report release time is so heavy, us peons must wait a few minutes to access the report. Yesterday, we waited 10 to 12 minutes as corn continued to fall. That is when the USDA issued a statement on its website that technical difficulties led to a delay in the report being released.
What did that mean? That sounded like no one had seen the USDA numbers. By that time, corn was down 15¢ and beans were up 6¢. A commodity guy on X (former Twitter) said he thought the logarithm trading computers were reading blank USDA numbers as bearish for corn and bullish for beans. By the time the USDA numbers were available to the public about 38 minutes late, December corn was down 19¢. A few minutes later when the public knew what the actual numbers were, corn futures were down 21¢.
Heads need to roll at the USDA. Somebody had the USDA information while very few others had. Grainstats.com has always provided the USDA numbers to us faster than the USDA does, but even Grainstats.com did not post numbers until they copied Reuters Karen Braun's report and sent it to its subscribers. That report included no details. The CFTC or the CBOT should have stopped trading as soon as the USDA said they were having problems. Congressional Investigation and lawsuits, maybe criminal charges should be the next step as all this USDA stuff looks really hoaky.