Yesterday’s price pressure and commensurate rise in open interest suggested a fair number of new short positions were initiated. Today, however, positive news on U.S.-China trade talks sparked a modest rally in soybeans, wheat, and corn that likely saw many of those new short positions erased. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said today that China had pledged to buy “a substantial amount” of ag and energy products from the U.S. That was (obviously) construed as bullish for ag markets, and traders responded accordingly. Wall Street is slightly higher with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones 30 indexes in the green for the day. The latest minutes from the Federal Reserve show central bankers are not eager to rai...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.