The CBOT saw another day of strength in wheat as funds continue to pare back their short positions in that market while commercial buying interest picked up, especially for HRW wheat. In contrast to the weakness observed earlier this week, the soy complex rallied across the board on a combination of technical buying and fresh export sales news. Corn was somewhat the laggard for the day with early gains being rebuffed by selling pressure, including greater marketing sales from farmers. Funds are thought to have been net buyers of 10,000 contracts of wheat and 6,000 contracts of soybeans, while selling 4,000 contracts of corn. The monthly Cold Storage report featured significant increases in both red meat and poultry stocks, with chicken and...
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.