Disclosure: This is not financial advice. It does not promise a price move.
Introduction
The USDA WASDE report is the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It prints forecasts for supply and use of wheat, rice, coarse grains such as corn, oilseeds such as soybeans, cotton, and other products the issue covers. The title asks how that report moves grain and soybean prices. A price is a separate quote. This page shows how to put the report’s lines next to a quote without inventing the jump.
The publisher’s page is the USDA WASDE report site. Open that page for the calendar and the file. Copy the release date printed there. This article does not freeze a clock time or a list of future dates.
What the file contains
Each issue is a set of tables for a crop year. For a grain or for soybeans, the lines people read are beginning stocks, production, imports, domestic use, exports, and ending stocks. Production is the harvest the USDA is forecasting, built from area and yield in that issue. Ending stocks are what the table says would be left after the use lines. The issue may also print a season-average farm price forecast. That forecast is the USDA’s number. It is not today’s exchange quote.
The same issue can include world tables and U.S. tables. Write which table you opened. A world soybean line is not the U.S. corn line.
How to read one crop
Pick corn, wheat, or soybeans. Find the U.S. page for that crop in the PDF or the spreadsheet the USDA posted. Write the issue date. Write beginning stocks, production, domestic use, exports, and ending stocks as printed, with their units. If a cell is blank, leave it blank.
Then open last month’s issue, not a memory of it. Write last month’s ending stocks beside this month’s. The change is a subtraction of two USDA cells. If you did not open last month, write “prior issue not opened.”
Yield and area sit upstream of production. If production changed, look at those two lines before you tell a story about demand. If the table does not show why production changed, write “reason not in the table.”
The stocks-to-use figure
Some readers divide ending stocks by total use and call the result a stocks-to-use ratio. Do that only when both numbers are on the page you opened, and write the units. A ratio without the two cells is a rumor. The ratio is not, in this article, a prediction. It is arithmetic on one issue.
How people connect the USDA WASDE report to prices
An exchange price is a quote with its own timestamp. The USDA WASDE report does not print that quote. The careful comparison has three rows: this month’s ending stocks, last month’s ending stocks, and a futures or cash quote you opened yourself, with the time. If the quote is from before the release, label it “before.” If it is from after, label it “after.” If you have only one of those, you do not have a before-and-after note.
Traders talk as if a smaller ending-stock figure than they expected “supports” a price, and a larger one “weighs” on it. That is their story. This article did not test it and does not repeat it as a rule. What you can say is which USDA cell changed, and what the quote was at the time you wrote it down. The CFTC explains that a futures contract can gain or lose: futures market basics.
A survey of analysts is someone else’s average guess. If you cite a surprise, name who published the average and the date. If you do not have that sheet, the only surprise you can document is the change from the prior USDA issue.
World tables
The world page can name other countries’ wheat, corn, or soybeans. A change in a foreign production cell is still a USDA cell. It is not automatically a U.S. price. Put the foreign line on its own row. If a news story names a country the table does not name, write “country not in this issue.”
The sheet
- Issue date, copied from the USDA page.
- Crop and table: U.S. or world.
- Ending stocks this issue and last issue.
- Production, yield, and area if they are the lines that changed.
- The farm-price forecast if the issue prints one, labeled “USDA forecast,” not “the price.”
- Any exchange quote, with source and time, or “quote not opened.”
- The sentence you will not add, such as “prices will rise.”
The USDA WASDE report is read when those rows exist. A headline that says only “bullish” is not a row.
What the report is not
It is a forecast. Later issues replace earlier ones. Keep every issue you cited. Do not overwrite August with September.
It is not a futures order. Contract size and month live on the exchange page. This article prints neither. Before you pay a firm to trade the quote, check the firm in NFA BASIC. Investor.gov explains investment risk.
It is not nutrition advice and not a weather forecast. Weather may be why a later issue changes yield. The weather note needs its own publisher. Until that issue prints, write “yield not yet revised.”
Social posts that tell you the report’s effect are clippings. The CFTC note on internet hype is Understand Risks and Markets before Reacting to Internet Hype.
A monthly routine
On the morning the USDA calendar says the issue is due, open the WASDE page. When the file appears, save it. Fill the sheet for one crop only. The next day, add the quote time if you care about the title’s question. If you never opened a quote, the honest title of your note is that you read the balance sheet. You did not document a price move.
The following month, repeat with the new file beside the old one. Two months of that is a record. It is still not a system that pays.
A second crop the same day
If you also follow soybeans, give soybeans a second sheet. Do not copy the corn ending stocks into the soybean row. The titles share a release. The tables do not share a crop. Wheat gets a third sheet if wheat is the question. Cotton and rice are in many issues too. Leave them blank until you open those pages.
Write the unit beside every figure. Bushels and tonnes are not the same word. If the world table uses a different unit from the U.S. table, do not add them.
Mistakes
The first mistake is mixing crops. Soybean ending stocks do not fill the corn row.
The second mistake is calling the farm-price forecast the futures price.
The third mistake is a percent move you did not compute from two timestamps.
The fourth mistake is a commission link described as the report. The report is the USDA file.
The fifth mistake is treating one issue as the last word. The next issue is allowed to change the cells.
FAQ
What is the USDA WASDE report?
It is the USDA’s monthly supply and demand estimates for crops including wheat, corn, and soybeans.
Does it move grain and soybean prices?
Only a before-and-after quote, written down, can show a change in a price. The report itself shows supply, use, and a farm-price forecast.
Which line do people read first?
Ending stocks, then production. Write both from the issue, and last month’s ending stocks beside them.
Is the file free to open?
The USDA posts it on the WASDE page. Use that page rather than a reseller’s copy.
Should I trade the minute it appears?
This article does not say to. A futures trade is a separate decision. Read the CFTC basics first.
Conclusion
The USDA WASDE report is a dated balance sheet. Grain and soybean prices are dated quotes. Put the ending-stock cells and the quote on one sheet if you want to study the title’s question. Do not write the direction the quote should take. This is not financial advice.
