Soybeans and soyoil held their gains from higher overnight closes, but the guidance of being higher to neutral overnight in corn, wheat and meal was rejected by day traders. Neither solid corn export sales, weather concerns in European and Chinese wheat, nor the prospect of trade agreement relief could turn around grains. There was a new contract low in wheat, and of course new contract highs in cattle. Speaking of trade agreements, around the same time the EU was announcing a list of American products facing retaliatory tariffs, the White House was bragging about a trade deal with the United Kingdom. Markets chose the hope of the latter over the risks of the former. Notably, the ink isn’t quite dry yet on a bilateral U.S.-UK tr...
Macro: Treasury Squeezes Yields, the Dollar Gives Way Today’s markets are offering a lesson in pressure: it rarely disappears — it simply moves. The U.S. Treasury stepped into the bond market after long-term yields surged to levels not seen in nearly two decades. By announcing plans...
Key Takeaways: Weather conditions in Europe have continued to deteriorate following both the EU MARS’ latest balance sheet update and the August WASDE, leaving “official” estimates lagging behind the reality observed on the ground. WPI’s models anticipate a 4 perc...
Key Takeaways: With cattle supplies historically tight and packer margins deeply negative, beef processors are reducing excess slaughter capacity, with decisions over which plants to close driven by cattle availability, operating efficiency, and the ability to maintain high utilization rates...
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.