General Comments Lacking much in the way of fresh fundamental input, grain and soy markets allowed themselves to be influenced by a few positives from the outside. First, there was China announcing that its GDP grew at the rate of 8.9 percent during the 4th quarter. Although that is relatively low growth by the standards of the last several years, it is nonetheless slightly higher than expected. What it really seems to be is a signal that China's economic slowdown is a rather mild one and well under control – so far. With the Lunar New Year coming next week, the government is unlikely to make any major moves until later, but some analysts think China will relax bank reserve requirements and possibly lower interest rates to...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...