Overnight trading started out with mixed results amid slack volume, but the soy complex started to rally during the wee hours and carried the grains along with it. General Comments Outside markets were mixed. U.S. stocks shrugged off reports of higher unemployment claims and lower retail sales in January. Instead, they paid attention to several favorable corporate earnings reports and rallied higher in afternoon trade. The Dow closed up 63 points and is back over 16,000. Currency traders did pay attention to the negative economic reports, and the U.S. dollar slipped lower against most major currencies. Gold was higher, but crude oil closed just about unchanged. Copper finished lower.Overnight trading started out with mixed results amid s...
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.