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WASDE report

The USDA's monthly balance sheet for major crops, published around midday on the 9th to 12th, and the single largest scheduled event in agricultural futures.

WASDE gives production, use, exports and, most importantly, ending stocks for corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, sugar and livestock, domestically and globally. The stocks-to-use ratio it implies is the market's core scarcity measure.

Because the report replaces guesswork with an official number, prices routinely gap on release and lock-limit moves are possible. The January report, which finalises the previous year's harvest, is historically the most volatile.

Example: the trade expects corn ending stocks of 1.85 billion bushels and WASDE prints 1.54 billion. That 17% tightening can move December corn 25 cents, a limit move worth $1,250 per contract, in the first minutes.

Related: corn-futures, soybean-futures, wheat-futures, prospective-plantings, lock-limit

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