GSCI funds gained 4.7% as USDA's larger soybean crop hit grain ETFs

November CBOT soybeans, which had traded to a contract high earlier Friday, settled 35 3/4 cents lower after the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised its 2026 crop. Teucrium's soybean fund ASOYB does not hold that contract. It holds November 2027, January 2027, and March 2027 futures. It fell 2.3% Friday and 0.5% on the week. The report repriced a harvest the listed soybean product is not built to own.

U.S. exchanges were closed Monday for Labor Day, so the ETF week was four sessions. The funds that made money were the ones built around oil, not the harvest. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 9.4% from Friday's close to Friday's close, to $100.05 a barrel. Brent gained 8.7%, to $104.61. The iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust CGSG gained 4.7%. abrdn's Bloomberg All Commodity Strategy fund ABCI gained 2.1%.

Energy paid the GSCI holder

The split was construction, not a rounding error. Invesco's Optimum Yield diversified commodity fund APDBC, at $7.79 billion the largest broad futures product, gained 4.1%. The iShares GSCI dynamic-roll fund BCOMT gained 4.3%. Harbor's Quantix-tracking fund CHGER gained 2.1%, matching ABCI.

Energy futures made up 59% of the long commodity-futures notional in Invesco's DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund CDBC as of Saturday's holdings file; that fund gained 3.9%. In ABCI, which tracks the Bloomberg Commodity Index, energy was 39% of the futures book, agriculture 34%, industrial metals 13%, and gold and silver 14%. Gold futures fell 1.5% on the week, to $4,408.90. The Bloomberg mix is built to keep energy from dominating. This week that design showed up as a 2.6 percentage point gap versus the GSCI trust.

Thursday was the tell, as WTI rose 6.7%, to $102.48, while the copper futures fund CPER sold off. The two sleeves of a "commodities" allocation were not in the same market.

The delivery month mattered inside the oil complex too. abrdn's longer-dated Bloomberg fund ABCD, which tracks the same index three months forward, gained 1.4%, trailing the spot-index fund by 0.7 percentage points. The crude spike was in the front of the curve, and WTI gave back 2.4% on Friday. Direxion's Auspice fund BCOM, which can sit in cash instead of long futures, gained 0.2%. It did not take crude's week.

Energy-weighted products clustered near 4%. Bloomberg products clustered near 2%. Single-crop funds and copper did not cluster with either.

CGSG is up 58.2% year to date; ABCI is up 35.6%; CDBA is up 13.4%. The year, like the week, has been an energy weight. The return did not pull money into the winner. The GSCI trust's shares outstanding were 29.45 million on Friday, the same count as on June 30, after 17.4 million more shares were redeemed than created in the first half. APDBC took in $806 million year to date through Wednesday, September 2. CDBA took in $630 million through Friday, September 4.

USDA cut corn and still offered more soybeans than expected

USDA's September Crop Production report, released Friday, forecast U.S. corn for grain at 15.8 billion bushels, down 1% from August, on a yield of 178.5 bushels an acre, 2.2 bushels below the prior forecast. Soybean production was raised to 4.535 billion bushels, a record, on a yield of 52.8 bushels an acre, up 0.1 bushels from August. Pro Farmer said the production figures came in higher than expected. The corn cut was also shallower than the 173.2-bushel yield Pro Farmer's crop tour had published in August.

December CBOT corn settled at $5.30 1/4 a bushel, down 3 1/2 cents on Friday and 6 1/2 cents, or 1.2%, on the week. November CBOT soybeans settled at $12.96 1/2, down 13 1/4 cents on the week and 2.7% on Friday.

The grain funds do not hold those nearby contracts. ASOYB holds 2027 futures. The corn fund CCORN holds March 2027, December 2027, and May 2027 contracts; it fell 0.7% on the week, against a 1.2% drop in December corn. The wheat fund AWEAT holds December 2027, March 2027, and May 2027 Chicago wheat and fell 0.9%, extending last week's decline. ABCI holds the harvest contracts the report actually repriced: November 2026 soybeans and December 2026 corn, together about 5.5% of the futures book.

CDBA gained 0.3%. Teucrium's four-crop fund CTAGS, equal-weighted across corn, wheat, soybeans, and sugar, fell 0.5%. Teucrium's sugar fund CCANE was the only crop that paid, gaining 0.9% on the week, then dropping 2.5% Friday with the rest of the agriculture complex.

Crop Progress is due at 4:00 p.m. Eastern on Monday, September 14, Grain Stocks at noon on Wednesday, September 30, and the next WASDE on Friday, October 9.

Next month's report meets the same 2027 contracts

The October 9 WASDE will reprice November soybeans again. ASOYB will still hold November 2027, January 2027, and March 2027 futures. Nearby beans can take the report; the listed soybean product cannot, until those deferred months do.