The CBOT ended sharply higher on Wednesday with corn and wheat leading the way. Higher energy values helped soyoil futures score new contract highs, despite the recent pullback in European sunoil and rapeseed oil values. Wednesday was the last day of the Goldman and index fund rolls, which means spreads will again return to being more reflective of commercial supply/demand expectations. Some profit taking also developed on Wednesday as traders pare risk heading into the long holiday weekend. Note that the CBOT/CME markets will be closed on Friday, 15 April in observance of the Good Friday holiday. Funds were net sellers of soybeans for the day with brokers estimating they liquidated some 4,000 contracts of their long position. Manage...
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.