The CBOT had relatively little fresh news upon which to trade Wednesday, which meant markets were largely at the mercy of fund positioning and existing trends. As equity markets fell sharply for the day and currencies wobbled, traders began looking for safe-haven assets, which helped diminish CBOT trading volume and any upside potential as well. Corn and soymeal both still finished with quiet gains, however, as technical momentum and short covering continue. The soybean and soyoil markets, on the contrary, fell amid outside market pressure in the latter and more confident fund selling in the former. Wheat futures were mixed but the MGEX spring market saw pressure from the first results of the Wheat Quality Tour. Overall, the day had the fee...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn, wheat, and the soy complex all formed new contract or at least rally highs to close what has become one of the most uniformly bullish weeks in CBOT history. Escalations in the fighting between Russia and Ukraine and attacks on civilian merchant vessels show n...
The Federal Reserve Board holds an annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, each year about this time, and this year’s meeting is now. It’s always a “must-watch” event, but this year, amidst persistent inflation and with a new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, it drew additiona...
You cannot escape the vortex of opinions about water scarcity in the Western United States, especially in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin. Agriculture is the villain in many of these editorials. Agriculture uses too much water, so it should use less, is the refrain. We all wish it was...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.