Katie Geerdes

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…