On Monday’s stocks report, the big surprise was on corn stocks. USDA reported corn ending stocks at 1.532 billion bushels, which was 207 million bushels higher than their last estimate of carryout and 195 million bushels higher than the average trade guess. That counts as the second-biggest bearish surprise on the September stocks report since 1990.

We have regular reporting on exports and ethanol usage, so we have a fairly accurate picture of those aspects of demand. The surprise most likely came either from lower feed usage or an underestimate of the size of last year’s crop. Either way, that is the number we have to use for beginning stocks now. And it adds more cushion to this year’s crop.

Almost everyone agrees now that yield will be lower than early-season estimates and hopes, but when you add the additional acres to the balance sheet and now the higher beginning stocks, we are still looking at a 2-plus billion-bushel carryout. And that is with some very robust demand. We need all that demand—and more.

The U.S. government has shut down due to gridlock in Congress. That means no USDA reports or flash sales. That means the bearish stocks report we just got on Monday will be the last we hear from USDA for a while. The October Supply and Demand report, originally scheduled for Oct. 9, has already been delayed and will be canceled altogether if the shutdown lasts very long.

USDA will not be able to collect the yield data and conduct the surveys needed to compile the report. The October Supply and Demand yield is usually a big one, as it includes actual harvest data. We will not get any flash export sales announced either. So, we could conceivably have some big purchases of U.S. grain by foreign countries, and the only way we would know is through the cash market chatter. Export inspections will still continue to take place, so we will know the pace of loadings, but that does not give us the whole picture if we do not know what future sales are being made.

Corn traded lower in response to the USDA stocks report. Soybeans continued to trade lower since we still have zero sales on with China, and they just bought a tremendous amount of soybeans from Argentina to help them make it until the South American new crop—that reduces their need for U.S. soybeans.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced assistance they were going to provide to the Argentine government. It gives the appearance that the U.S. government is providing support to the Argentines at the expense of U.S. farmers. That is not a good look.

So yesterday, Trump tweeted that he would be meeting with the Chinese president in four weeks and that soybeans would be the major topic of discussion. Trump said he will never let our farmers down and it is all going to work out very well. In response, soybeans flipped from making new lows to close up double digits. They followed through on Thursday to also close up 10 as well.

We have had more false starts than I can count now. This exhibits how quickly the tone is going to change if there is actually a deal with China or major progress. But we also got a preview of how fast we are going to drop if we do not get a deal with China. If China does not buy, we have too many beans. If they do, we are going to be tight. South American weather will also be key.