The CBOT opened weaker overnight with funds taking profits following a moderately bearish WASDE yesterday and a key reversal in corn futures. That selling accelerated during the day session with little news to offer support and China and Southeast Asia heading into the Lunar New Years holiday. Funds are thought to have sold 30,000 contracts of corn, 20,000 contracts of soybeans, and 12,000 contracts of wheat. Malaysian palm oil inventories rose to 1.32 MMT at the end of January, up 4.7 percent from the prior year. The stocks build-up came despite a slowdown in production and was due to a 14-year low export pace in January. Despite the news, April palm oil futures rose 1.6 percent overnight and are heading towards an open chart gap at...
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.