Argentina Macroeconomic Updates Argentina saw a shortened trading week, with no markets last Thursday and Friday. It was also the first week of trading under the new exchange rate regulations, so it took the markets a few days to adjust. Regarding the official exchange rate, it opened on Monday above 1,200 ARS/USD (versus 1,075 the previous Friday) and ended the week at 1,170 ARS/USD - slightly above the 1,130 ARS/USD that exporters had been using to settle under the "dólar blend" scheme. As for prices, by the end of the week, nearly all commodities posted significant gains – some even larger than the exchange rate increase – meaning prices rose slightly in U.S. dollar terms as well. Still, due to the uncertainty and the...
What You Need to Know Today: Non-farm payrolls rose by 172,000 jobs in May, above economist expectations of 80,000 jobs. With the job market strong, the Fed may consider raising interest rates to tame inflation. The strong jobs report was a catalyst for lower risk appetite across financial and...
Newworld screwworm Update The detection of New World screwworm (NWS) in Texas on Wednesday has been volatile for the cattle markets. The confirmation came on Wednesday evening, and the futures market opened sharply lower on Thursday. Market participants cited unknowns about cattle supplies and...
With considerable fanfare—and few specifics—USDA last week announced its Great American Cotton Plan for 2026-2031. Secretary Brooke Rollins and industry leaders described the initiative as a comprehensive strategy to address the persistent challenges facing U.S. cotton production, d...
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.