Grains and soybeans followed the overnight close by trading lower at the open. The early stretch just saw fractional declines but later in the morning, corn and soybeans took deeper dives. Volumes were modest to lower, except in cattle futures. Despite expectations that the current hotter, drier weather pattern will ding some quality in the crops, futures trading ironically focused on the present where there is a good start to the season. The danger comes if the current heat and dryness become a longer-term pattern. If it is still hot and dry headed into next month, there will be a rush to add weather premium. For the week, July corn is up 1.25 cents, July soybeans up a half-penny, November soybeans down 8 cents, and all three...
What You Need to Know Today: Iran says its definition of the Strait of Hormuz is now a “vast operation area” that stretches from Jask to Siri Island. The White House said President Trump did not sign a suspension of the TRQs on beef imports but is “finalizing potential...
If the media headlines and Trump critics are to be believed, President Trump is headed to Beijing this Thursday in a weakened position. China is in control, it has the upper hand, and expectations are very low. These are the same critics that argue against overly simplistic zero-sum analyses in...
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.