The amount of uncertainty surrounding this year’s corn and soybean crops was reflected in today’s round of USDA reports. In its monthly Crop Production and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) reports, USDA made few revisions, acknowledging more information will be shared in next month.See also 2018's "Beauty Contests and The Term Structure"
“The report was neutral,” says Joe Vaclavik, founder and president of Standard Grain. “The USDA kind of just kick the can down the road and the number of respects.”
This month, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will collect updated information on 2019 acres planted, and if the newly collected data justify any changes, NASS will publish updated acreage estimates in the August Crop Production report.
For corn, USDA kept the national average corn yield at 166.0 bu. per acre. The season-average corn price received by producers is lowered 10 cents to $3.70 per bu.
“USDA left the corn yield number unchanged versus last month, and they used the June 28 Acreage number, which a lot of people—including USDA—believed to be wrong,” Vaclavik says. “They use the June numbers until they know more, and they will not know more until that August report. So, this is kind of a placeholder until then.”
The corn outlook calls for larger production and beginning stocks, greater feed and residual use, lower food, seed, and industrial (FSI) use and increased ending stocks....MUCH MORE
...The famous Keynesian beauty contest literature emphasises the strategic complementarity in forecasting the forecasts of others. Keynes (1936) suggested that such a mechanism could be at work in stock markets, with share prices determined not just by fundamentals but also according to how investors think that other investors value particular shares....
The six winners in the beauty contest of the Sunday Times. The Washington Times, 5 May 1907.
National Digital Newspaper Program, Library of Congress.
