General Comments Futures markets opened at 10:30 ET this morning for the first time since the Christmas holiday, but judging from today's very light trading volume, the holiday is continuing for many traders. As a result of the light volume, it did not take many orders to move prices, and most of today's orders seemed to be sell orders. An opening attempt at a rally quickly faded as non-commercial selling took over. Funds of various types including technical traders continued the same selling pressure that dominated pre-holiday trade. Liquidation was the game today, and no doubt some managed money pools are now short the grains if not the soy complex. The market's technical profile remains weak, and this continues to entice selling by te...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.