USDA provided some interest for the soybean market when it announced that a total of 185,000 MT of soybeans were sold to unknown with 120,000 MT of that for 2014/15. General Comments We wish clients and friends a happy and safe holiday!For the last six years, the year-end holidays have been a potentially treacherous time for grain and soy traders. Market volatility was high to begin with and even small market orders could drive prices sharply and inexplicably up or down when the trading population and volume declined in typical holiday fashion.Today's market performance was much more in the mode of a traditional Christmas Eve, unmemorable with very light volume and very limited price movement. Corn and wheat futures prices moved in 3-6 ce...
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.