Grains and livestock markets traded opposite directions to end the week with non-meat products ending lower amid profit taking and pre-WASDE position adjustment while livestock futures rallied across the board. One might have expected grain futures to post gains to end the week, given the week’s generally higher trend and overnight attacks on Ukraine’s port infrastructure, but traders were cautious amid the ongoing harvest and long-term bearish trends. Livestock futures did rally, however, based on positive developments in the stock and macroeconomic markets, as well as encouraging slaughter numbers and cash market trade. Funds were net sellers in corn, wheat, and the soy complex while taking the opposite position in livestock m...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
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.