General Comments Today is Election Day, and most U.S. markets closed higher. The Dow was up 133 points several minutes before the stock markets close. The dollar was marginally weaker. Crude oil took a big jump, being up $3.06 to $88.71. Gold gained almost $32. Copper was higher, as were the leading soft commodities. Grains and the soy complex all posted gains after general weakness the last several days. Is there a connection between the election and higher market prices? History says so since markets frequently trade higher on the days of elections. However, today it is hard to spot one other than widespread relief that the far-too-long campaign is over. Markets need uncertainties to drive trading, but traders themselves dislike uncert...
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...
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.