The CBOT was mostly lower on Tuesday with risk-off trade and seasonal factors driving most of the day’s action. The markets are also seeing a good bit of repositioning heading into first notice day on Friday, which helped drive heavy-volume trade and some of spread trade dynamics. The soy complex saw some interesting strength, however, that helped push soybeans and soymeal to form bullish semi-reversals on the charts. The seasonal patterns in the major commodity futures favor a selloff from now into early April but the soy sector technicals are pointing to something possibly different. Much will depend on the USDA’s pending acreage outlook in the Ag Outlook Forum that will occur later this week. Weather forecasts continue...
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.
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...