Soymeal was the upside leader (and one of the few markets to finish higher) on Tuesday as a combination of tight spot supplies and strong feed demand bolster physical prices. Soymeal futures surged to new contract highs on heavy volume, which helped pull the soybean market into the green as well. Past that, the CBOT was almost exclusively lower with wheat and corn continuing their respective selloffs. Even the livestock markets, which face a bullish supply outlook, turned tail and posted large losses for the day. Weakness in cattle futures was related to weakness in the beef cutout while the hog market selloff was related to a slowdown in slaughter levels and suspected weakness in packer demand. Funds were net sellers in corn and wheat for...
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.