It is interesting to see that investors and investment money managers have not totally forgotten about commodities.Historically, most conservative investors looked upon commodity futures markets as nothing more than gambling casinos or worse. Never did they consider placing serious investment money in commodity markets. If they played in commodity markets at all, it was with the same attitude with which they might approach a blackjack table. However, rising demand led by China for commodities as raw materials from the developing world by the late 20th century caused some analysts to wonder if commodities offered long-term prospects for price appreciation. Slowly, various commodity markets began to attract a different kind of participant, on...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.