The CBOT ended sharply lower on Monday with corn and wheat leading the downside move. Both markets had achieved strongly overbought levels last week and were ripe for a corrective selloff. Funds were net sellers as they pare positions ahead of this week’s WASDE report. Most analysts expect the WASDE to be neutral/bearish (though the report is often volatile) and funds are paring length on that outlook. For the day, funds are believed to have sold some 20,000 contracts of corn and 15,000 contracts of wheat. Funds were relatively flat soybeans but likely sold 10,000 contracts or so. End-user pricing was notably absent as few buyers were willing to chase the market higher into fresh contract highs. WPI looks for the May WAS...
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.