Were You Ready for Today's TACO Tuesday?

Darin Newsom

Tue, May 19, 2026 at 8:04 AM EDT 5 min read

1. Monday afternoon's headline told us the US president had said he was postponing his latest threat toward the annihilation of Iran, as has come to be expected.

2. Also as expected, this caused Watson (algorithms) to sell the Energies sector and initially buy metals, all as if by design.

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3. However, the Grains sector was able to build on Monday's strong rally, for the most part, through the early morning hours.

Morning Summary: Truth be told – and truth is so hard to come by these days – we didn’t have to wait until Tuesday for our Chicken TACOs to create early Turnaround activity. The headline broke Monday afternoon, “(The US president) says he’s postponing ‘scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow (Tuesday)’ at Midde East leaders’ request” (from CNBC.com). Does anyone believe, for even a split-second, that this was “at Middle East leaders’ request”? Anyone? Bueller? I didn’t think so. The reality is the US president’s inner circle were able to liquidate some of their long positions in the Energies sector during Monday’s rally, knowing full well what was coming next. We saw the odd activity in energy markets throughout yesterday’s trade. And sure enough, when the overnight session opened later in the evening, WTI crude oil (CLN26) dropped as much as $2.26 (2.2%) while Brent crude (QAN26) lost $3.20 (2.9%) and diesel fuel (HOM26) fell 11.0 cents (2.7%). As I talked about in a piece for Barchart a month or so ago, this is all becoming so predictable it is almost boring. Gold (GCM26) initially rallied, adding as much as $28.20 before falling back overnight. Similarly, silver (SIN26) was down $1.29 (1.7%) to start the day. US stock index futures (ESM26) (NQM26) (YMM26) were lower across the board as well.

Corn: The corn market started the overnight session under light pressure, but as the hours lengthened we saw renewed buying interest once again. July (ZCN26) gained as much as 4.75 cents on trade volume of 47,500 contracts, solid overnight activity, and was sitting 1.75 cents higher at this writing. Recall July closed 21.25 cents higher Monday, one cent off its session high, followed by the National Corn Index coming gaining nearly 21.75 cents from last Friday. That tells us there was indeed support from the commercial side to open the week as well. However, the CME website throws us a bit of a curveball Tuesday morning with total open interest in the corn market decreasing by 12,280 contracts during Monday’s rally. July lost 365 contracts, September decreased by 5,730 contracts, and December was off by 8,130 contracts. I’m not sure what to make of this, other than a round of noncommercial short-covering and or lifting of new-crop short hedges. As for new-crop, September (ZCU26) was up 1.5 cents at this writing with December (ZCZ26) sitting 0.75 cent higher to start the day. Dec26 poked its head back above $5.00 overnight, hitting a high of $5.0075 before backing off slightly. Fundamentally, the new-crop market remains neutral.