07/23/26 Afternoon CommStock Report – Another Year Ending in 6 Impacting the Cattle Industry?

It was a long time ago, 1980 actually, when a Chicago Ag economy cycle’s analyst (Jake Bernstein) got me motivated to become a market analyst and eventually start this company.  He correctly forecast Ag’s economic top in 1980 to an uncanny degree making me one of the few who was told what was coming even though there is only so much you can do to prepare for an Ag depression like that. Some define a recession as “your neighbor going broke” and that a depression is “when you go broke.” I know they make it sound like the Ag economy is in a depression in the click-bait of you-tube videos and crop margins are tight but by definition we are not in a recession, forget a depression yet in NW IA. I should emphasis the word “yet”. We have had good production in our region receiving USDA ACHs and are getting by. My neighbors are not going broke. That comes from someone who has lived through one. In an Ag Depression you can sell the stock of the Ag bank you borrowed money from and pay them back on the gains of shorting their stock as that bank failed. Ag…