The extremely slow pace of corn planting in the U.S. was previously discussed in the 13 May analysis (click here). The eastern Corn Belt is especially affected, and the soybean planting pace is equally slow. The markets hadn’t responded to this problem up until last Monday’s crop progress report, but it certainly took notice the balance of this week. December corn futures gained more than 30 cents heading into today’s trading session. December Chicago wheat’s gains were even more impressive, gaining 40-50 cents. Funds have been building record-large short positions in corn and wheat for months without any meaningful risk. The setback in the U.S./China trade talks seemed to make them bulletproof. The problem, of cour...
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.