Welcome to the table for the Friday, December 5th, 2025 installment of Market Plus.

And joining us back, John Roach.

We've got some more things to talk about.

So during the break, we were discussing the economy at the top of the show.

We heard that there were some, I guess, disappointing things that happened this week with the economy.

What's your take on it?

>> You know, the interesting thing is, is that a lot is about the economy and is what's your perspective?

I mean, what what what are you expecting?

And and one of the things that people talked about was the rate of inflation that, that the fed would like to have it at 2%.

And it came in at almost three.

And but but my perspective on that is that, that, that, that that's excellent news actually the.

If we're able to hold inflation rates in this environment below 3% or near 3%, which is where we've been most of the year, at the same time we've had GDP growth rates that are pushing up against that 3% number, or maybe some months a little better than that.

That's really a pretty good situation to be in.

If you back up and look at where we've been for the prior five years, I mean, the, the, the, the fed would love to have inflation at 2%.

But the reality is they never get it there and they work hard to get it there.

But it's a real struggle for that to occur.

And then I think that the news that came out about consumer demand for Black Friday and the numbers that I read the the in-store purchases, the dollar amount was up, I think 1.4%.

And then between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the online purchases were up some from 9 to 10.5%, depending on whose estimate you looked at.

I mean, those are phenomenal rates of of consumer spending in a time frame when we're being told the consumers are really in difficult straits and that the consumer outlook is very negative and it surprised everybody, particularly in the cattle market, when we saw those numbers come out on Tuesday.

And so a market that had been beaten down hard, turned around and just caught on fire and and the stock market did the same thing.

And so the the economic picture from, from my perspective looks a lot brighter than what we were afraid we would be seeing, particularly if you go back and look in the spring of the year.

Remember we talked about tariffs and people thought that the tariffs would be so damaging.

And here we are.

It's December and holy cow.

You know things aren't so bad.

You know we're here.

The political winds of course talking about you know the the how expensive everything is and so forth.

I'm not sure what people expect if they expect prices to actually get cheaper.

I mean, I don't remember that happening hardly ever, you know, but they're going up at a much slower pace than what they were going up just six, eight, nine months ago.

And so the the environment I think is a lot more bright than what we thought we would be seeing at this time.

Going back a few months or or longer.

>> We didn't get to talk about hogs during the main segment.

The hog market.

Is there anything you see happening in that market to give it a punch?

>> Well, the markets, it's kind of going sideways here.

I mean, we've been kind of stuck at the same price level.

And it's a cheaper price level than we had in the summer.

And it's getting some of that demand coming to it that that would go to the beef market if beef prices weren't so much of a premium.

And we think that market's kind of a steady as it goes, so to speak.

As we look out forward, we don't see any real big moves in either direction in pork.

And so if we get some strength and we get a rally back up, that makes some sense to to get some price protection.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But but we don't see real problems forward.

We think the market's in pretty good shape.

>> We've got some more soybeans coming in from social media.

So Nathan or excuse me.

Yeah Nathan in Iowa is asking how high can July 26th corn prices go if export business continues to be this robust?

>> Well, the corn market has really had very strong demand from all sectors.

The feed demand has been strong.

The ethanol demand and the export demand has been strong from all sectors.

And but we've also had to absorb a lot of farmer selling because the crop was was sizable in many areas.

Maybe not every area.

And maybe we'll find out in January that the that the yields weren't quite as big as we thought.

There's a lot of farmers that try to try to talk that story and believe that story, that the yields turn disappointing due to the late harvest or the late growing season.

Weather conditions.

And so there's some opportunity on that side.

There's also opportunity with South America having a crop in the field right now, and you can have problems there.

And so I don't know how high the price can go.

I've never been very good at forecasting a price level out forward, but I think you're going to have several rallies in this market between now and springtime.

And what you have to do is just be prepared to sell each one of the rallies.

You need to pay attention to some sort of an oscillator system and try to get a good average of the market peaks between now and summer.

The corn market, the oscillator that we use, we call them our sell signals.

We normally between November and March, the end of March, we normally have three sell signals that are just a little less than three.

And between the end of March or 1st of April and August, we normally have three more.

So we think there will be six opportunities here, six cycle peaks that you'll have an opportunity to make sales when you just have to be willing to do it.

And here's the problem that most farmers are going to have in this environment.

And that is the price will never be quite high enough.

Depending on how you calculate your costs and so forth.

Even if you're a a low cost producer, the price is never high enough.

So you're going to have to learn to sell pieces of the crop on the market peaks and average those together.

And then you're going to have to get better with your basis transactions so that so that you you might have to separate the futures from the basis side.

Because normally when the futures make a peak, the basis is not very good.

And then the basis gets better when the price gets cheap and farmers don't want to sell and the buyer has to come after the grain.

And if you look at ethanol demand as strong as it is, you're going to have some ethanol demand that's going to have a hard time buying corn, and there'll be some basis opportunities.

So you've got to sharpen your marketing skills rather than look out forward and listen to my forecasts of how high prices could get or someone else's.

Because we don't know.

We don't know what the weather is going to be.

And that'll be the main determining factor.

>> All right.

So Wayne in Iowa is asking could we see $12 soybean prices for May delivery?

>> Okay.

Now the difference between corn and soybeans.

We've got lots of corn.

Our bean numbers could get to be tight.

If this Chinese business actually materializes the crush.

We set a record crush number last month, so the demand for soybean oil to go into the biofuels industry is very, very strong.

And it's.

And so the domestic demand for soybeans is very strong.

But the export demand is puny.

So whether we can get the Chinese coerced into buying beans, even though we may have a higher price market or not, is yet to be seen, but it seems as if the Chinese want to get along with us.

And I think it's pretty clear the administration is making the case that if you don't buy these soybeans, we're not going to get along.

And I think that and the administration is telling us that that's what they're doing, and they're assuring us that they'll buy.

So for a minute, when the market's down here at a low price level, again, I don't know how to forecast how high it can go.

All I know to do is to follow what my rules are and my rules are.

I don't sell beans on this kind of a sell off.

And I do look at the meal market and if I'm a livestock producer, I've got a buy signal on meal.

I need to make sure I've got some meal on hand to cover myself out for 60 days or so.

So that is my best advice.

And can we hit $12?

I can, I can diagram you exactly what it would take to get there.

And it's not a lot.

It's really not a lot.

It's just the Chinese business and a little bit of a problem in Brazil with weather.

And we'll get to $12.

But will those two things happen?

I don't know that.

>> If we only could tell, right?

If we can only read the future.

Okay, so more soybean talk.

And this is coming from soybean trader 8888.

He's what he calls himself.

When does the soybean season end?

>> Well, it was an interesting story.

The secretary said that in this season they'll buy the 12 million.

>> And there was a lot of confusion and debate about why he said that.

>> And I don't know exactly why he said that, but here's my suggestion.

And that is our opportunity.

Time to sell soybeans to China or anybody else really is when the Brazilians don't have many.

And the Brazilian harvest will begin in January, those beans will be available.

And and unload and being unloaded on board ships in February.

And so I think that's the reason he said February, because that's our season to sell between now and February.

And then once you get into February and beyond, the then we'll be done.

So okay.

Okay Thank you so much, John, for your insight and for being here today.

>> Thank you very much, Brooke.

>> All right.

Next week, one family's love of farming leads to success on and off the farm.

And Market Analysis with Ted Seifried.

Thanks for joining us and have a great week.