Latest / AG Bull / AG Squawk AM 11/4/2026 with Jed Sidwell | Breaking Down the Midterms

Transcript

AG Squawk AM 11/4/2026 with Jed Sidwell | Breaking Down the Midterms · AG Bull

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning and welcome to Ag Squawk AM Jed Sidwell, registered broker here live from Gillade, Illinois.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we had a big election night last night, and we have a lot of things that have come out of it that we need to discuss.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, we had a Stonex survey report and some feedlot weather conditions to talk about, but to all of that and more here in a bit.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Both live cattle and feeder cattle came back down a bit yesterday.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Live cattle were down about a buck and a half at$218.15.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Feeders were down more.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: They were down$4.30 at$3.28.38.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: As we look towards lean hogs, the front month was green.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: The rest were red, however, though.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But in the front month they were up 43 cents at 58.60.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Before we quote the grains and the energy markets, I'd like to shout out our sponsor, plus 500.
• 1:10
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• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as I look here live, the December corn contract is up just a hair.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's 442 and three quarters.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Beans are making a bit of a rally this morning.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're at 1209 even.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the December Chicago week contract is at 601 and three-quarters.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Looking towards the weather, kind of the same story that we've had here the past couple days on the weather side of things.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Corn Belt here in the U.S.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have our rains that we've been seeing here end by Friday.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're going to have a week or more, week or so or more of dry weather following that, with warm to very warm temperatures continuing throughout the Midwest, 20 degrees higher above normal.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The mid-south plains, the winter wheat, and feedlot areas are also going to dry out, which will be good for conditions there.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: As we look towards south of the equator, the southern Brazilian and Paraguay areas take big storms early tomorrow.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And again, Friday night and Saturday.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a 15-day total up to around four to six inches.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So quite a bit of moisture there.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Stonex number came out yesterday, and we got to give Stonex some credit.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: They were the only ones that were kind of seeing this drastic change in yield that came with October's WASDI report.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going to be really interesting to see if the USDA follows Stonex again.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what their report came out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to focus just a bit more on the soybean side.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But looking at it, let's pop it up big here on the screen.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The top one is the Stonex number.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The middle one is the SP or is the USDA and the bottom one is the SP global.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Stonex November survey put soybean yields at 55 bushels an acre even.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's up from 54.1.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the SP global number is at 53.5, up just a bit from 52 and a half.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we can see, the USDA has kind of thread the needle between both of those surveys.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as this November WASDI report comes out, we'll have to see if that is the case.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Stonex has been, you know, rather high in terms of their yield, but probably seeing the trend more correctly than most of the folks on Twitter have been.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So a decent resource to keep on our radar there.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Looking towards the livestock market side of things, uh, feedlock conditions have been just a bit rough recently.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Colorado and parts of western Nebraska have certainly been dry, and even parts of the panhandle, but the rest of the areas, Grand Island, into southeast Kansas, parts of Oklahoma, and even into Hereford, it has been fairly wet.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the stats to back it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: The September-October rain at six core feeding belt stations ran 2.8 times the median.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most since 1974, which was 2.4 times the median in 1985, centered on southwest Kansas and the Texas Panhandle, where they got some of that flooding there.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as we can see, the meet the dots there are certain years.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the farther you go on the right is the more rain that you've gotten.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're up high, those are the kill weights that you we have had above the normal.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're below, then those are the kill weights that we have had below the normal.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the title of that chart though, there is Wet Falls Haven't Met Lighter Cattle.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we might just assume because we get poorer feed yard conditions, we want to push these things to the packer faster.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: But we can't say this has historically been the case.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see there, 1985, the last year it was quite near even near this bad for feedlot conditions.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: We still had steers, you know, kind of towards the median there.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: 2008, there, we were above the trend.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the next highest one in terms of weights.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think just from this general pattern that we've had in the cattle feeding space here recently, there's no reason to assume that we just won't continue pushing these things to higher weight.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at the general news, and I've been saving it for last because it's the big headline to talk about today.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, as agriculturalists, it can be kind of concerning to see a blue wave like this roll through.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the cards that we've been dealt, and we have to play them.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the headline Democrats take control of the House and the Senate.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Five midterm election takeaways, and I'm going to read them off here.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Tech billionaires poured record money into Republican races, and most of their candidates lost.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's fairly evident from the results.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even most of the governor races, a lot of Democrats, Democrats won.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that in a more in a bit.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Democratic House means more subpoenas, and the AI CEOs and data center projects are the first things that they're going to be looking at.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll be interesting to watch.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that'll be a good thing for farmers with regards to a lot of their water rights.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: The mid-decade restriction redistricting meant to protect the GOP house largely backfired.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some of that kind of gerrymandering there maybe didn't work out.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then here's the big one.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Trump's hand-picked candidates led by Ken Paxton in Texas cost Republicans key Senate seats.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Texas went blue.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't catch that, crazy to see.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because, you know, Trump backed Ken Paxton.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe had he not backed him at all, he would have done all right.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be interesting to see the future of Texas and what happens there.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then here's the last one that truly affects agriculture, and maybe wasn't our fault, but it's directly tied to agriculture.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats tied grocery aisle costs to Washington corruption, and voters bought it.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: They blamed Republican for high Republicans for high prices at the grocery stores and pushed it back, pointing the finger at Republicans.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it grocery store prices on certain things have been higher.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can directly say that processed food has been incredibly higher.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the price of beef when I went to college by the time I ended only went up just a little bit.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you what a Tostino's party pizza cost by the time I went to college and the time it ended, it doubled.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't the only things in the grocery store that have doubled in price here recently that aren't necessarily the direct problem for farmers to be blamed for.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see how this, you know, new blue wave wants to address the food price problem and whether they point the finger at us next.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Looking on the economic calendar for today, the MBA mortgage applications came out already at 6 a.m.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Central.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: The ADP weekly employment change comes out as I'm speaking now at 7.15 a.m.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The SP Global Services PMI comes out at 8.45.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: The ISM Service Indexes at 9.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the EIA Energy Stocks at 9.30 a.m.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Central.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for watching and thank you for listening this morning.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's always a pleasure to come on and discuss everything with you guys to start off your day.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've had a lot of content that we've been pushing out on a lot of platforms recently.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tommy went live on all social medias, YouTube, X, whatever you want to name it, breaking down the election as it happened.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about a lot of good things on there.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's still on all your social medias at Ag Bull Media that you can go and watch.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Davis is going to have Steven Davis.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit confusing.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Davis Michelson is going to have on Davis or on Stephen Davis at some point on Ag Squawk in the afternoon.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Steven's an incredibly smart trader that knows so much.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably forgotten more about markets than I will ever know.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be a great episode.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure and keep that one on your radar.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And look towards AgBull for your next subscription service.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you like markets, if you like knowing what's going on in the weather, what the price of oil, the straight of horn moves, what the price of corn, basis, the cattle on feed numbers, all of those things.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: AgBull Media is your service.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to stay informed on general news, get Weissmeyer's written articles as well as his pulse on DC and get the gain all the benefits of his expertise.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Go to Weissmeyer's perspectives on our website.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm running long this morning, so I better wrap her up.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for watching and thank you for listening this morning.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jed Sidwell with AgBull Media.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're a financial channel that absolutely loves agriculture.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.