The midterm election has come and gone with the results about as predicted – a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. This will give the chattering classes (and President Trump) plenty to talk about, but the reaction of financial markets today belies a doom-and-gloom outlook. Grain and soy markets were largely unaffected by anticipation of the election and show little/no affect from its results. They remain much more interested in Thursday’s November WASDE from USDA. Pre-report expectations are generally for modest changes in the U.S. supply/demand estimates - a small decrease in corn production and stocks, almost no change in soybean production but a small increase in stocks, and hardly any changes for wheat. As everyone kno...
Markets are caught between reasons to keep selling and reasons to take another look. Fund liquidation and renewed peace talks are pressuring grains, while fresh export business and some diesel relief offer encouragement. Corn recovered nearly 10 cents from its low to finish higher, while soybea...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
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.