Grain Stocks Overshadowed By Prospective Plantings

The Prospective Plantings report on Thursday took a lot of wind from the sails of the Grain Stocks Report. Corn stocks saw a jump of 3 percent compared to March 2017, totaling 8.89 billion bushels.

For Jim McCormick of Allendale, Inc., the biggest surprise was that 180 million bushel increase, calling it a “bullish surprise.

“It might be we fed more livestock, and they found 180 million bushels—that tends to be what moves the market,” he said. “The acreage report gets the hype. If you look back historically, it’s the stocks that shock the market.”

To Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk and AgriTalk After The Bell the feed numbers are “excellent,” but the residual numbers are concerning.

“There’s probably going to be a lot of movement on the residual component of corn,” he said.

Based on the report, McCormick says regardless what’s been said to be going on in Argentina, there’s not a shortage of beans in the world.

However, this wasn’t reflected once the report hit. Corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton were all green.

“You’ve got to let the shock of the acres wear off and once it does and they start looking closer at the stocks number, that could put a cap on things,” said Flory.

This could come as soon as Monday when the markets open after being closed for the three-day Easter weekend.

Hear why both McCormick and Flory think the 2017 soybean crop has been underestimated and the advice they give viewers on what to do with their crops on Markets Now on U.S. Farm Report above.