Surprisingly, wheat led the commodity complex higher today with soybeans a reluctant follower and corn futures unwilling to touch $3.55/bushel. U.S. stocks are higher with the Dow up 62 points and the S&P 500 gaining 14.6 as of this writing. The dollar is rebounding from its recent slide, adding 30 points today on the back of minutes from the Fed’s December meeting. The CBOE VIX index is down (again), hovering just above 9. Investors are apparently expecting a rosier 2018 and are consequently selling gold, with the lead COMEX contract down $1.60/ounce. Crude oil is higher with both WTI and Brent up roughly $1.30/barrel and both above $60. Corn March corn futures traded both sides of unchanged today in unexciting tr...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.