The May jobs data came out; there was an increase in private payrolls of 559,000 jobs. At any other time, other than post COVID era, that would be bullish news for the economy and the equities market. Instead, it was bearish. The expectation was 675,000 jobs, and we are still 7.6 million jobs down from where the economy was pre-COVID. There’s much discussion about federal unemployment benefits whether they are creating a hurdle to hiring. The math is simple: compared to the last pre-pandemic month, February 2020, average hourly earnings are up 6.4 percent; total hours worked are down 3.6 percent. Agriculture is seeing an impact across the board with meat and poultry plant workers, transportation, loading dock and warehou...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.