· Analytic
Z4389 Corn Emerged Pace (State-Weighted Belt)
How fast the US Corn Belt is reaching the emerged phenology stage versus the five-year same-week norm, weighted by state production share. Patched 2026-10-25 to replace the national-aggregate anti-pattern , identical state-weighted methodology to the patched Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) Development Pace signal.
Current reading
-0.685
Moderate Neg
DORMANT · WAITING FOR APR
DAILY · SIGNAL
As of Oct 30, 2026. Updated nightly. · NEXT WINDOW APRIL 2027
Current composite
-0.6934
On the plus-or-minus one scale; belt emergence ran meaningfully ahead of 5y norm
SEASONAL STATE
DORMANT · WAITING FOR APR
Emergence is biologically complete and the NASS Crop Progress data vendor is in its annual dormant window for this stage. The current reading carries structural information from how the prior emergence cycle resolved, not live yield-risk information. The next NASS Crop Progress emergence window opens in mid-April.
Signal state
Moderate NEG
88 days in episode
All-time percentile
8.8th
Bottom-decile of 26 years Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
MODERATE_POS corn fwd 60d
-6.23%
643 days (7.2%), HAC t -4.11 sig at 1% Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
EXTREME_NEG corn fwd 60d
+1.93%
1,355 days (15.1%), HAC t +1.70 Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
Historical sample is dominated by in-season firings; off-season sample conviction is reduced.
Current contribution to ML Auto Corn Composite V9
+0.051
7.3 percent weight × -1 polarity × -0.693 value
OBJECTIVE
The emerged phenology stage marks when the corn seedling physically breaks through the soil surface. For Corn Belt production states, emerged pace is a direct function of soil temperature + seed-moisture conditions in late April through early June. Late emergence compresses the growing window, pushing silking and grain fill into later-July heat windows where yield-stress risk is elevated. The USDA NASS Crop Progress weekly reports include emerged percentage by state. This signal takes state-level emergence data for ten belt states (Iowa 0.19, Illinois 0.15, Nebraska 0.12, Minnesota 0.11, Indiana 0.08, South Dakota 0.07, Ohio 0.05, Missouri 0.05, Wisconsin 0.04, Kansas 0.04 , approximately 90 percent of US corn production), computes each state’s current-week minus five-year-same-week mean, weight-aggregates by production share, z-scores, polarity-inverts so belt-behind-pace maps to positive signal, and tanh-bounds. The signal was patched 2026-10-25 to replace the pre-patch national-aggregate anti-pattern (same DATA_INVENTORY L7295 anti-pattern as pre-patch Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt), Corn Condition Week-over-Week Delta (State-Weighted Belt), Corn Silking Pace (State-Weighted Belt)). The empirical pattern across 26 years of state-level NASS data is BIMODAL on the behind-pace side, mirroring the Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) Development Pace pattern. MODERATE_POS state (val between plus 0.2 and plus 0.5, belt mildly behind pace) delivers mean corn fwd 60d of minus 6.23 percent (HAC Newey-West t minus 4.11, significant at the 1 percent level, 643 state-days). EXTREME_POS state (val above plus 0.5, belt well behind pace) delivers minus 1.58 percent (HAC t minus 1.35). EXTREME_NEG state (belt well ahead of pace) delivers plus 1.93 percent (HAC t plus 1.70). The signal reads minus 0.6934 as of October 23 2026, at the 8.8 percentile of 26 years , belt emergence was running meaningfully AHEAD of the five-year norm through the 2026 growing cycle, consistent with the Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) Development Pace reading. The signal contributes 7.3 percent weight to ML Auto Corn Composite V9 ML Auto Corn Composite with polarity sign minus one; current contribution plus 0.051 (positive to ML Auto Corn Composite V9 composite via polarity flip).
LIVE CHART
Twenty-six years of state-weighted Corn Belt emerged pace vs 5y same-week norm.
COMPOSITE
-0.7 / 100
STATE
Moderate Neg
PHASE
-1
FWD 60d
+1.21% (baseline +2.31%)
SAMPLE N
9,039 days
TODAY’S PLAYBOOK READING
STATE
Moderate Neg
STATE AND PERCENTILE
MODERATE_NEG at the 8.8 percentile , bottom-decile of 26 years. Belt ran ahead of its norm.
WHY THE SIGNAL IS HERE
Favorable April-May 2026 belt soil-moisture + temperature pulled corn planting forward (per Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) belt-pace reading) and consequently pulled emergence forward.
POSTURE FOR THE WEEKS AHEAD
MODERATE_NEG delivers plus 1.59 percent corn fwd 60d (HAC t plus 1.90). Mild signal; the strong tail is MODERATE_POS (belt mildly behind), which the current reading does not reflect.
WHAT THE CHART SHOWS
The composite sits at -0.69 in the Belt Ahead Of 5y Emergence Pace band, 8.8th percentile. The blue signal line flipped from the deep behind-pace extreme in early-to-mid 2026 to the ahead-pace extreme by late June as late-emerging states finished their emergence. The current reading is a post-season signature of how the 2026 emergence cycle resolved. CBOT front-month corn (orange, right axis) sits near $4.48/bu.
TOP INPUTS FIRING
- Primary composite -0.69 State Belt Ahead Of 5y Emergence Pace, moderate-neg band, post-season signature from the 2026 emergence cycle resolution.
- Belt-weighted emergence pace Production-share-weighted average across the ten I-States (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas), collectively approximately 90 percent of US corn.
- IC vs CBOT corn fwd 60d: Spearman -0.130, p=2.6e-25 (N=6,352) Negative IC is the bimodal pre-priced-tail fingerprint: deep behind-pace extreme (positive composite) pre-prices the compressed-window risk and underperforms baseline on fwd 60d.
THE TAKEAWAY
What this means for you today
WHAT BELT EMERGENCE IS TELLING YOU
Belt emerged pace is a leading indicator of growing-season timing. When belt states run ahead of their 5-year norms through late-April into May, the entire growing cycle pulls forward: silking happens earlier, grain fill earlier, harvest earlier. Early phenology exposes crops to EARLIER heat windows (if July is hot) but AVOIDS later-season frost risk. The 2026 belt-ahead reading is directionally consistent with the Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) Development Pace signal (both engines read belt-level NASS Crop Progress with similar methodologies , the pair are approximately correlated).
THE 2026-10-25 STATE-WEIGHTED PATCH
The pre-patch engine queried the NASS_CORN_EMERGED national-aggregate scalar table , the DATA_INVENTORY L7295 anti-pattern that gives New York (0.1 percent of US production) equal statistical weight to Iowa (19 percent). The patched engine queries state-level CROP_PROGRESS_WEEKLY and aggregates by production share across ten belt states covering 90 percent of US corn. Belt-concentrated weighting captures the production-relevant signal rather than the national averaging artifact. Pre-patch, the 2026 reading would have placed this signal in different state territory than the patched reading now shows.
THE HONEST CAVEAT
The state-level NASS Crop Progress data begins 2000-01-01, so the signal’s effective history is 26 years (vs the 38 years available on the national-aggregate alternative). The empirical state-conditional corn fwd 60d statistics are BIMODAL on the behind-pace side (MODERATE_POS delivers -6.23 percent, EXTREME_POS delivers near-zero) , same empirical pattern as Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) Development Pace. Readers should NOT interpret the state ladder as smoothly monotonic. The signal is approximately CORRELATED with Corn Development Pace (State-Weighted Belt) (same NASS Crop Progress data, different phenology stage); ML Auto Corn Composite V9 inherits both, so the combined 15 percent weight across the two represents cross-corroborating phenology reads rather than two independent predictors.
THE REGIME MAP
The three belt emergence-pace regime states, forward returns and sample share
Behavior across the state-weighted belt emergence-pace signal (CBOT corn benchmark, 2001-05-08 through present). The Behind-pace tail is the compressed-growing-window risk regime. The signal is bimodal with the extreme-behind tail pre-priced by the time it reaches saturation.
| State | Phase | Share | Fwd 60d | HAC t | Edge vs baseline | Last firings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belt Ahead Of 5y Emergence Pace TODAY | – | 25.0% (2263 d) | -0.35% | -0.64pp | Jun 2026, Apr 2026, Jun 2023 | |
| Belt At 5y Emergence Pace | 0 | 59.1% (5343 d) | -4.90% | -5.19pp | Feb 2025, Oct 2023, Jun 2023 | |
| Belt Behind 5y Emergence Pace | + | 15.9% (1438 d) | -3.42% | -3.71pp | Apr 2026, Apr 2026, Apr 2024 |
The historical pattern
Methodology
THE TRACK RECORD
State changes
| State | Start | End | Duration | Fwd 60d SPY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extreme Neg | 10/23/2024 | 02/07/2025 | 74d | +4.92% |
| Normal | 02/10/2025 | 04/02/2026 | 288d | -7.22% |
| Extreme Neg | 04/06/2026 | 04/10/2026 | 5d | +13.18% |
| Extreme Pos | 04/13/2026 | 04/17/2026 | 5d | +9.56% |
| Extreme Neg | 04/20/2026 | 06/18/2026 | 43d | +5.93% |
| Extreme Pos | 06/22/2026 | 10/23/2026 | 88d | +1.30% |
Scroll inside the table for the full history. Forward 60-day SPY is measured from each run’s start date; a reader cannot trade off a start-date they only identify in hindsight, so this is a transparency log, not an alpha claim. Asterisked (*) returns are partial. The run is less than 60 trading days old. The full 60-day comparable fills in as more data arrives.
What this measures
The engine queries USDA NASS state-level corn emergence data from `weather_data.CROP_PROGRESS_WEEKLY` with `agg_level=’STATE’`, `progress_stage=’EMERGED’`. For ten belt states, computes per-state 5-year rolling same-week mean, per-state pace = current – 5y mean, weight-aggregates by production share, forward-fills daily, z-scores on 504-day rolling window with 60-day minimum, polarity-inverts (negative final = belt ahead of pace = bearish-corn), tanh-bounds. Five-state machine on the final the primary composite.
GO DEEPER
Want the full depth?
The full research brief adds the methodology detail: how the belt-weight comes from USDA NASS annual production share, how the five-year same-week comparison handles pace-rank-z-score, and why the extreme-behind tail is pre-priced by the time the signal saturates. Also includes the full three-regime state-conditional table with the HAC-t statistics for each state, the three historical case studies anchored to in-season composite readings, and the methodology for pairing the signal with Development Pace, Silking Pace, and the Corn Cycle DNA playbook.
Taxonomy, polarity, state labels
Not investment advice · The analysis on this page is informational and educational. Signal readings, historical case figures, and empirical statistics are derived from publicly available data and are provided without warranty. Hypothetical performance results have inherent limitations, including the benefit of hindsight. Readers who intend to trade should consult a licensed investment professional and see the research brief for the full disclaimer.
Last refreshed Nov 02, 2026 11:15 AM ET