General Comments As Dave Juday noted yesterday, in response to a suit filed against the CFTC by two swaps and financial market trade associations in the U.S. DC District Court, the court vacated CFTC's new futures market position limit rules which were set to go into effect this month. The suit claimed that CFTC was misinterpreting the Dodd-Frank financial reform act by saying the law required them to expand the coverage of position limits from the nine agricultural CME, KCBOT and MGE grain and soy futures contracts that have long had such limits to all other agricultural, energy and metals futures contracts. The suit also alleged that CFTC erred in not conducting a cost-benefit study of the new position limits it proposed as it is requi...
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...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.