Friday’s market weakness carried over into Sunday night’s trade and that of Monday’s day session. Nearly every grain/oilseed market broke sharply lower and posted significant losses for the day. The livestock complex was one of the few at the CBOT/CME to trade higher for the day. Weakness in global vegoil markets was responsible for the soy complex’s collapse while improving weather forecasts for the U.S. (better rains for the Upper Midwest this week and the Corn Belt next week) pressured the corn market. Brokers estimate funds sold 30,000 contracts of corn on Monday and 20,000 contracts of soybeans. Funds also sold 10,000 contracts of soyoil and a similar volume of soymeal contracts. Funds were net sellers of some 7...
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.
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...