General Comments Today's market action was what some analysts like to refer to as "consolidation." This is a term that is frequently used when there is not much else to say about the market. And there also was a distinct lack of fresh fundamental or outside macro input. Overnight e-trade was muted with some profit taking in the soy complex pressing those prices, while the unwinding of inter-market spreads lent some support to corn and wheat.The day session opened with small gains for soybeans, wheat and corn. Export sales last week were as good as expected or better, and this supported markets at the opening. Among other things, last week's export sales showed that there is still considerable demand for old crop corn and soybeans with th...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.