Except for the cattle markets, the CBOT was sharply lower to start the week with trade policy, favorable weather, and weak technicals and large noncommercial short positions weighing on market sentiment. Cattle futures managed to rise to new all-time highs after last week’s record-breaking cash trade, and livestock markets are the one area where funds remain solidly bullish. In grains and oilseeds, a lack of any bullish news and the aforementioned weak technicals triggered steep selling, with corn leading the way. Except for some mild weather concerns in parts of the EU and Black Sea and a seemingly early end to Brazil’s rainy season, there are few weather threats for the major growing regions, which is pressuring market sentime...
What You Need to Know Today: The cattle market rebounded sharply this week, with January feeder cattle futures gaining $16.98/cwt and February live cattle futures advancing $7.60/cwt since last Friday. Tyson Foods' plans to restore a second processing shift at its Amarillo, Texas, facili...
Tuesday’s CPI report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed inflation roaring back stronger than expected in October. That probably locks in another rate hike – which was expected anyway – at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in December. Consumer pric...
Key Takeaways: The rationale for farm programs has changed significantly from their original intentions. Farmers’ incomes have grown sharply and have surpassed non-farm incomes beginning in the 1970s. Current farm programs are complex and focus on supporting risk management, environmenta...
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.