The CBOT was mostly lower to start the week amid a combination of technically driven and fund position liquidation selling. After the charts turned weak at the end of last week, funds were already starting to lighten up on long positions and continued that trend with more vigor on Monday. Recent longs are now most likely underwater in the major ag products, and funds are cutting losses. Additionally, with first notice day for May futures coming up on Friday, there is a last-minute rush for the exit as any speculative bets on continued May/July spread strength are shed. There was little fresh fundamental news for the day, but the big factors remain strong soybean exports at cheap prices from Brazil along with the favorable weather conditions...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.