The start of 2026 has been the exact opposite of what dry bulk markets and traders expected at the end of 2025. Typically, the Lunar New Year and post-holiday demand lulls mean that Q1 freight rates are often the weakest of the year. This year, however, rates rallied sharply on unexpected demand strength, which is boosting sentiment for the rest of the year. One of the key drivers ...
What You Need to Know Today: Rising hostilities and an end to any semblance of a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran created geopolitical risk-off trade in macroeconomic markets, though the CBOT seemed immune. President Trump announced the U.S. military would resume its naval blockade on Iran...
USDA released its monthly World Supply and Demand Estimates on Friday, forecasting tighter beef supplies and growing pork and broiler supplies. Beef production was lowered due to a slower fed cattle harvest, which was offset somewhat by cow slaughter. Fed cattle slaughter was forecast to...
Developer's Note: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where obs...
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.