Katie Geerdes

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 08/04/2026 There Will Be a Test PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update I am on vacation…you are not. I leaving you some homework to read on a subject that we will all have to become more familiar with…AI. In the realm of human development nothing comparable has ever served as the accelerant of the advancement of any species on earth, the galaxy or beyond for all we know, comparable to AI. Technology was already accelerating. AI will throw gas on the fire. Two generations ago, my wife’s grandmother, a teacher, said she drew a picture of a horseless carriage for her students. The first horseless carriages did not have odometers or good brakes. They had to figure out by experience what safety measures should be added. AI is in a similar state of development. We now hold a computer connected to the world via internet in the palm of our hands and now we are looking at human knowledge exploding exponentially on the basis of AI. It is only in its conception and the beginning of construction of what is envisioned. Data…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 08/03/2026 Personal Protohistory Introspection…Now Shared PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update How much do you have to work to accumulate wealth? A lot of people think that a 40-hour work week is all that a company should be able to require of anyone to be a full-time occupation and that is fine. My young son works a 4-day 10-hour shift at a company and then takes the opportunity when offered to work another 8-hour shift at time and a half. He still has two days off to do something else. He details boats and vehicles. No one is going to do more than maybe pay the bills working a 40-hour week and given affordability issues today, the bills will exceed most paychecks. I came home from college to farm in 1973. My dad told me that it was the shock of his life and had not expected it. He accepted it though and was a great partner from then on. The first 10 years or longer I learned what I didn't know I needed to learn. I got no regular paycheck but…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/31/2026 August Seasonal Trends to Know PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update Last day of July. August will open up new stages of the growing season, being known as the make-or-break month for soybeans and the most critical window for grain fill in corn. The dog days of summer continue to stoke concerns over heat and humidity before late August can feature minor cold fronts that mesh with increasing hurricane activity. August weather dictates final yield and quality prospects for crops including spring wheat in the North and cotton in the South. Crop tours eventually kick off in August and the USDA puts boots on the ground to launch objective yield surveys for corn and soybeans. August is sometimes associated with thinner market volumes as summer vacations wrap up before kids are back to school. The month is marked by grain traders for having produced lows the last two years for corn and soybean futures. After grain prices defied their usual patterns of bearishness this July, be wary of expecting another round of August lows. Be aware of these seasonal price trends…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/30/2026 The End of the World Order as We Knew It PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update I am on vacation this week meeting our family in Brazil. After drinking Matthew and Carol's coffee, I am looking forward to seeing the trees it comes from in Minas Gerais. The Seibt family, Matthew's in-laws there, expanded their coffee production a few years ago and his wife Carol and Matthew began importing it into the US. I'm leaving you with this report which was derived from Ian Bremmer's TED Talk adapted into a structured article format. Ian is considered to be the worlds foremost geopoliticist taking nothing away from Peter Zeihan. The Three New World Orders: Who Really Runs the Planet? For decades, answering the question "Who runs the world?" was simple. If you grew up during the Cold War, you lived in a bipolar world dominated by two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the global order shifted into a unipolar world, with the United States acting as the sole global superpower—exerting raw power and dominating global…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/29/2026 August Weather Outlook Improving/Brazil Expansion Pausing PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update Not surprisingly, oppressive heat over the weekend chipped away at crop condition ratings with some regions reaching triple digits temps. While extreme heat continues to linger in North Dakota, the worst appears to be behind us as temperatures fall back within normal ranges. We keep hearing that crops look better than expected but will need a rain soon. The forecast does show a strong chance of widespread showers this next week bringing relief of 1" or more in many areas. This rain won't be enough to get us to the finish line, but it will be an extremely important rain as time has run out. Figure 1: Rainfall Forecast Through August 2nd Stress Degree Days are quickly accumulating, surpassing the 140-point day threshold, generally considered to be detrimental to yield in many areas in the Western Corn Belt. Follow the red line in the image below. Most of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and large portions of South Dakota are well past the threshold. There are regions in South Central South Dakota…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/28/2026 No Good Exit from the Escalation PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update Exchanged threats from combatants have gone unheeded in Trumps Middle East war. Trump vows that if Iran attacks any vessel in the region that the US will destroy a bridge, power plant or some other infrastructure target in Iran. Iran's response is that then they will do likewise in Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE or Qatar. The disruption of shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf is being extended to the Red Sea. That shuts off an alternate oil export route the Saudis were using via pipeline. Iran also has more missiles left than we do interceptors so US air forces are moving some assets to bases in Israel for dome protection. One could read that as "we are tactically retreating". That said, the airstrikes on Iran continue and some new assets are continually arriving in theater that will bolster US forces there. A military solution has not shown promise to date and Iran shows no interest in a political one to date. These threats are exchanged, then made good upon,…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/27/2026 Too Hot Too Long PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update You have your full yield potential until you don't. We started out with it nationally this year which is not the case every year. Planting went great and conditions were favorable until post 4rth of July when the heat dome arrived. If I were looking only in my own backyard, we still likely have full yield potential. Given forecast temps, by the end of this week that may no longer be the case. Up until last week favorable crop condition still stood a chance of producing a record US yield. So much for a cool/wet El Nino summer. It was not drought so much as the heat that is the problem. We have enough subsoil moisture, that if temps had been average, we would have made the crop. Crops are drawing hard on that subsoil moisture where it exists. Rain now would be timely. Our farms are now at the 140 thresholds for cumulative SDDs but SD, ND, NE, MN and even IA are now taking damage getting cooked that will…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/24/2026 A Busy End of the Week for Markets PLEASE REFER TO THE BROKER COMMENTARY PAGE FOR UPDATES!! Click Above to Watch Brian's Afternoon Market Update Mark Twain is cited for saying that "God created war so that Americans would learn geography." The notion fits in today's world, as lately there have been a lot of obscure places popping up in the news, particularly for their connections to the conflict with Iran and the war in Ukraine. Many of the names are hard to pronounce waterways, like the Bab el Mandeb Strait, where the Houthi rebels in Yemen are targeting Saudi oil tankers moving out of the Red Sea. Getting to know the different Islamist groups is a whole nother story, what with the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas. If nothing else, Iran's various proxy forces show how wide the conflict is spread out across the Middle East. Iran has been targeting U.S. assets in Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, and in Jordan, where three soldiers were killed last Friday at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. The U.S. has been retaliating with strikes on Iran's largest port in Bandar Abbas. The Bandar Abbas port is…

The Commstock Report is a twice daily market report. 07/24/2026 Money Still Flowing Into Long Grains New Reco Day 1: Reward the soybean rally by setting a sales target of 10% of November 2027 soybeans at $12. We are already well advanced on 2026 sales. If you are behind, we advise catching up on those sales. While we believe there is still long-term upside potential, the market is perceived to be overbought and susceptible to eventual corrections. Call your broker for short-dated option ideas that may help add value to your sales. *** Futures trading involves risk. The risk of loss in trading futures and/or options is substantial and each investor and/or trader must consider whether this is a suitable investment. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Morning Market Talk There will be no Morning Market Talk today, we will resume on Monday. On the Grains Corn, soybeans and wheat strengthened overnight, with soybean and winter wheat markets scoring contract highs. Weather, geopolitical upheaval and supply-chain concerns continued to attract speculative money into the long side of markets. Prices have surged this week, so key today is whether funds continue to go all in on the long side or peel some money off ahead of the weekend.…

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…