9/30/26 Market Wrap Up: Corn Stocks Shock Market as USDA Finds More Grain Than Expected

Wednesday’s quarterly Grain Stocks report delivered a bearish surprise for corn, with September 1 inventories coming in at 2.095 billion bushels—well above trade expectations and up 35% from a year ago. The number was also above the high end of pre-report estimates, confirming a much larger old-crop supply entering the new marketing year.

USDA also revised the 2025 corn crop lower by roughly 57 million bushels, primarily by reducing harvested acreage while leaving the record yield unchanged. The combination of smaller production but substantially larger-than-expected stocks points to weaker-than-anticipated disappearance during the final quarter of the 2025-26 marketing year.