China was, of course, the focus for today’s trading but the CBOT opened with notable activity before the trade agreement was released. Wheat futures posted strong gains early in the trading day with buy wheat/sell corn trade. The soy complex was broadly weaker after palm oil futures and European rapeseed markets fell during the overnight session. Weaker energy markets helped facilitate sell soyoil/buy soymeal trade, though none of the soy complex products posted a bullish day. This afternoon, President Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed the so-called Phase One trade deal between the two countries. The long-awaited agreement is the first step in a full resolution to the trade war that has persisted since mid-2018 and c...
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.