CBOT trade was slow and mixed for most of Tuesday, with a slight uptick in commercial pricing interest supporting corn, soybean, and SRW wheat values. Funds are thought to have been modest net buyers of corn and soybeans. Yesterday’s Crop Progress report highlighted the raw efficiency with which farmers can plant crops and reduced any concerns that were related to a late planting. Farmers are taking no chances after last year’s disastrous planting season and are entering fields at any and every opportunity. Discussions for a free trade deal between the U.S. and the UK are back on the calendar and accelerating. Trade negotiators from both countries announced they will hold virtual talks with some 30 different groups. Both...
Macro: Treasury Squeezes Yields, the Dollar Gives Way Today’s markets are offering a lesson in pressure: it rarely disappears — it simply moves. The U.S. Treasury stepped into the bond market after long-term yields surged to levels not seen in nearly two decades. By announcing plans...
Key Takeaways: Weather conditions in Europe have continued to deteriorate following both the EU MARS’ latest balance sheet update and the August WASDE, leaving “official” estimates lagging behind the reality observed on the ground. WPI’s models anticipate a 4 perc...
Key Takeaways: With cattle supplies historically tight and packer margins deeply negative, beef processors are reducing excess slaughter capacity, with decisions over which plants to close driven by cattle availability, operating efficiency, and the ability to maintain high utilization rates...
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.