Welcome back to the table for the.

Friday, August 21st, 2026 installment of Market Plus.

Chris Robinson.

Still with us here?

If we had to do this ten days ago, you would have been down in the dumps.

>> Yeah.

>> Why?

Yes, things change quickly.

Yeah.

What goes up can easily go down.

I asked you about selling right now.

If I'm not interested in selling, what do I do?

>> Absolutely.

Positivity.

Buy yourself a cheap put and hope that you lose the value on the put.

It's not a trading decision.

It's a defensive revenue position.

So you're going to buy it.

And I just mentioned it.

You can protect for 80 corn for 91 days for $0.12.

So it's $600 plus your fees and commissions.

Corn can go to $17.

You're not going to make a margin call and you get to sell corn.

Higher corn goes back to 4.25.

You've got 480 covered.

It costs you $0.10.

You can turn it into futures.

You can do whatever you want.

That's what you do.

You want to you hope that we go higher or what it comes down to.

Same thing with $12 beans $12 beans might look really good if we go back.

We started the year at 1050.

>> Paul Well, we did.

And so part of this story that we're, I think talking about is demand.

And Scott and Wisconsin's first question is that demand is good for commodities.

The dollar is cheaper, yield is falling.

Our grains price accordingly, or is it still cheap in comparison to futures?

>> It depends on the supply that we have.

At the end of the day, things like wheat, somebody's growing a wheat crop somewhere, everywhere, every month.

But with the the corn and the beans, if we get it, if we don't have the supply that we thought we could, it would be supportive.

We got to remember in about another two months, they're going to start planting weather down in South America.

Now.

Is this going to be an El Nino year, blah, blah, blah.

We have that risk every year.

So if we've got pretty good supplies, if we have any sort of supply hiccup >> That would push prices higher.

He did mention, you know, the dollar being lower.

That always helps exports.

The third thing is if we do get the inflation trade going back again, a big reason we had that big blowup during Covid was the inflation trade.

That's why corn went from, you know, 450 to $8 because you had money coming in on that long side.

The thing is, it didn't last very long.

So you asked me before, will this last?

I hope it does.

But we've been through multiple 80 cent rallies when we had just dropped $0.80, when we rallied all the way back.

Soybeans had dropped $1.20.

We rallied all the way back.

So we could do that four more times.

You know, so and again, how do you do that.

You know where your sell targets are.

And if you can't make the sale, you get some sort of a hedge.

I like the put spreader because you buy the hedge and then the price can go through the roof, which is what you want.

And you're not making any margin calls And you haven't capped yourself at that price.

The flip side is why people don't like it.

You buy a put and it goes worthless.

I wrote about that in my letter this week.

It's like, you know, I had $0.06 put on a corn corn rally, $0.50.

He was upset that he lost the money on the sixth sense.

Like that is how you have to do it at the end of the day.

And if you can't be comfortable with that, you'll always be angry.

And you don't want to be angry.

You want to stay in position.

And at least, at least with the put option, you have a chance to defend the revenue and you always keep the upside open.

So we've had two of those opportunities this year.

Hopefully we get more in the next next six months.

>> Well, this one's a simple one then Matt in Ohio, is this the beginning of a commodities super cycle?

>> I hope so.

And my kids and grandkids hope so too, because that's good for everybody.

A rising tide lifts everybody.

It's more fun to hedge, you know, expensive corn than, you know, $4 corn.

It's more fun to hedge.

16, $17 beans.

And it also makes more sense economically.

We've been in a three year downdraft.

And then for about a month and a half, we sat in a 30 cent trading range.

So are we making a base?

I hope so, at the end of the day, the markets are going to do what the market's going to do.

We had a pretty big multi year, like seven year lows in the wheat.

So the market got definitely oversupplied.

Are we going to have a super cycle.

That depends on the overall world economy and the weather.

>> And the weather this week Part of the story that kind of gets lost in this discussion.

It's not crop tour.

It's it rained all weekend.

The morning news on the network side this week, pretty much every day led with some flooding in some spot across the country.

So there's that story.

So I know we had the question from Holtsville Farms about favorable crops and if it's there or not.

But what I want to know is if this weather pattern continues, does that is that what fuels us or is this just we've already come to a point where the news is, this is going to drive us through harvest.

>> I think it's going to drive us through harvest.

And I think it's going to be a case by case by case basis, whether or not the too much rain helps or not.

You know, I think earlier in the year, when beans were still, you know younger, there's that expression, beans don't like wet feet, right?

So now that we're further along and it might just help fill these plants out, but I think moving ahead, we're going to find out really, you know, those I think the big surprise from the tour was the lower yields, especially in the I states.

We knew they were going to be Lower Eastern.

But when they got into Iowa and Illinois, that's going to be a surprise.

So will the rain help?

I don't know if you're a farmer and you're a, you know, a bull, you're going to want to hope that these yields stay lower.

>> All right.

Let's talk about maybe not as much of a celebration right now.

And that's in the beef industry.

Scott, in Iowa is writing about the quadruple rammy for beef.

How do we how low do we go in the cattle market?

How many people are going to exit the business versus expand their herd?

We are currently looking at losing a lot of dollars per head on the cattle in the years or in the yards that are there right now.

>> It's going to be the I wish I had the answer to that.

You know, it's above my pay grade.

I will say this, you know, back in November, I keep talking about November.

We had we were lows.

We had a very good rally in May.

We had a $90 rally in all time highs.

A lot of that was fueled by the border being closed and everything else.

And, you know, I was here a couple times ago.

We were talking about, are we going to get, you know, $4 or $5 cattle?

It's like it looked like it was never going to stop.

So it's a lot it feels to me like 2015 where the same thing happened.

And then if you look at 2015, which is all we have to go on, was this history.

You know, we had a year and a half, two years of grinding lower prices to the market, finds its base.

So we'll have to see.

But you know, we've survived.

First we had the issue with New World screw.

Right.

That was a biggie.

And then we had the border reopening.

So this is the third thing.

It's like if this market can come back from this, that'll be very, very strong.

But yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty out there.

But like I said earlier, has all been lost.

No, we've lost half.

And that's just based on what the board is.

And we can talk more about the difference between the cash and everything else.

But there may be some some pain yet ahead to go.

And I think that if you're buying animals, you absolutely, positively need to make sure you know what your break even is because we could be back in, you know, fighting tooth and nail for profits.

>> I won't even tell you all the stories I heard this week at the state Fair about folks who have some priced, some who have none priced.

And they're just like, well, it's worked for me so far.

We'll see how it goes.

But that's a dangerous spot.

Discussion for another day.

Randy in Iowa, this one's an economic question.

And how do you foresee the announcement from the fed increasing buybacks impacting commodity markets going forward?

>> You know, that's probably the biggest question we're going to have in the next year and a half, two years.

The debt's getting bigger.

And what they're trying to do is, you know, support the the all the markets together and calm down The bond market in particular, the bond market yields, especially in the 30 years has gone higher.

That's a more thinly traded market.

The market's telling you that it thinks interest rates need to be higher.

That's when you look at this when the when the futures go down on the bonds and ten years it's pricing in the possibility of, you know, certainly rates not going lower.

So that's going to be something to absolutely, positively worry about.

You've already it's already starting to be something where you're hearing more and more about it.

And, you know, if that was the cause, you know, if you had a, an issue with the debt market, then that would flow through everything else generally if that happens.

And that's why I think you're starting to see a little bit of a recovery in the, the metals, because, you know, silver went from 120 to 55.

Now it's creeping back up above 70.

Gold was 5000 and came back down to 4000.

Now it's creeping back up.

So I think that is something longer term that you're going to have to watch.

And generally if we get big inflation I'll leave it at this.

Historically, if you go back and look commodities generally do well in inflationary markets.

So that's the one saving.

>> There's there's one sign of maybe that is what's happening.

Okay.

Crude oil up 10% this week.

But Jeff and I will wants to know, is it time for me to fill our fall fuel needs or do I wait?

>> I would say if we get a pullback certainly look at doing stuff we actually about six weeks ago we were down there, you know, crude oil traded to like 68.

We had a recovery in diesel.

Diesel fell back down.

You got to watch the diesel.

It comes down to so think if we get pullbacks I wouldn't be averse to doing it.

What's the risk.

The risk is we have problems in the Mideast again.

And we go back up to $100 a barrel oil.

If that happens then yeah that's going to drive everything up.

So how do you protect against that.

Well you buy where you need it.

Or you could do some hedges where you buy out of the money calls either in diesel or in crude oil.

And that's your protection.

Because if the market goes up, the calls gain value.

Theoretically, the money that you gain on those calls you use to pay for your more expensive fuel.

So I would say, you know, take a look at it.

It might make sense to do something around a third And the rest of it I would look if we get pullbacks, you know, take a shot at buying some.

>> You have to defend your entire industry.

In this last question, David and Nebraska about a month ago, the so-called experts said that we should have sold off all of last year's corn that was in the bins.

Here we are.

Corn that's $0.40 higher now than it was then.

Do these experts tell us wrong on purpose so that we can panic sell?

So the traders can make money off of us farmers?

>> I wish it was that easy, but it's not.

And I've been in this business for a long time.

I spent 20 years on the floor.

Nobody knows what's going to happen.

I got news for you.

They may think they do, but at the end of the day, the things I watch are the.

Every week, the Commitment of Traders report.

You can see which way those guys are bet back in May, which I think is we're talking about we were at 506 corn and it was three year highs.

The funds were all long and.

Yeah, absolutely.

We told people to clean up your old crop sales when you were up at 506, not when we went down, you know, and lost $0.60.

So it depends on where you're looking at.

I was aggressive at 506 because I knew guys needed to clean up sales, and if you didn't want to make the sale, hold on to your corn and buy a put, which is a substitute sale.

If you bought a put back at 506 or 490, put and we went down to 425, that was a really good hedge.

So everybody's responsible for their own decisions.

I follow everybody, I've talked to everybody.

I've again, I've stood in the pit where people spit at you and try and stab you with your pencil.

If they don't like you, nobody wants farmers to sell in the hole.

Farmers want, you know, we want farmers to make money at the end of the day.

And I think every marketing person out there, if we could tell you where the highs and the lows were, first of all, we wouldn't be doing it.

Second of all, we wouldn't be recommending hedges.

So now we're back up here at three and a half year highs.

I would say, yeah, if you've got old crop corn, sell it, sell what you need.

But if you don't want to sell it, buy yourself a cheap put, you know, but don't get mad if that put goes worthless and corn goes higher.

>> And on the way out, don't forget to look at 2027.

Right?

>> Yeah.

2027.

>> We're fast.

Be quick.

>> We're above $5 in 2027 corn and we're above we're right at $12.

We started the year this year at 420 and 1050.

So all these commodities are at three year highs.

Take a look at doing something.

>> We have to take a look at departing.

Thanks, Chris.

>> Thanks.

Thank you for having me.

>> Chris Robinson everybody.

Next week we are going to talk about the Mountain West and how it's squaring off over a shrinking water supply.

And Brad Matthews will be back with us.

Thanks for joining us.

Have a great week.