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...
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.
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...