The M2 money supply for January decreased for the second consecutive month. M2 is the amount of cash, held by banks, travelers’ checks, savings deposits, and retail money market accounts; in short it is the liquid money in the economy and used as a measure of money stocks. During the 2020 COVID pandemic and into 2021, relief payments made M2 explode. In February of 2021, M2 grew 27 percent. Today’s report showed that M2 contracted 1.7 percent from its year ago level; this follows December’s 1.12 percent year-over-year drop. Today’s report signaled the largest decline and the only consecutive month decline since records began in 1959. Couple this with higher interest rates which are increasing the...
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...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.