The CBOT continued its mostly range-bound trading affair on Wednesday with the ag markets seeing little fresh news to drive price action one way or another. Wheat futures hit new contract lows but recovered from that selloff to end slightly higher, though the market seems committed to staying near current levels. That statement could also be made of the soybean and corn markets where low-volatility trade has taken over since the Thanksgiving holiday. Traders seem to have become resigned to sideways trade heading into next week’s WASDE report and may have to continue that pattern into the holidays as the December report seldom offers big surprises. The most interesting price action right now is in the livestock markets where hogs look to be...
Key Market Insights Today was another reminder that this market is trading headlines first, facts second. Early optimism surrounding reports of a possible U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding helped pressure energy risk premium and kept the broader commodity space defensive. An hour later, how...
Key Takeaways: Cattle producers are currently capturing a greater proportion of total retail beef values amid tight cattle supplies. Packers are forced to make higher bids on cattle to keep operations running when supplies are tight, hurting packer margins. Sustained poor packer margins...
Dangerously Clueless Lazy analysts and food system critics have shifted attention temporarily from how bad our food is (UPFs,) to why it is expensive. Bloomberg correctly sites higher labor costs, tariffs, weather (El Niño), fertilizer prices, higher energy and transportation costs, the...
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.