Although this bull market has been driven at least in part by speculative money from noncommercial traders, it could not have survived as long and as strong as it has without some sort of fundamental support. One element of that is weather.It was interesting to discover this morning that the July corn futures contract had posted a new high price of $4.15 in overnight trading, although it seemed to have traded below yesterday’s close much of the time. Meanwhile, July soybeans traded at $11.0975, which is the highest price on the continuous chart since September 2014. After the day session began, it did not take long for July soybeans to obliterate the high set a few hours earlier. At this writing, they are up $0.30 at $11.2975, having set a...
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...
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.