Overnight trading was quiet with grains and soybeans holding small gains. The release of USDA’s acreage projections for 2016/17 gave markets something new to chew on during the day session. General Comments World financial markets seemed to achieve a better degree of stability today, although intra-day volatility remains a factor. European stocks traded higher on hopes that the European Central Bank (ECB) will enlarge its stimulus programs at its March meeting. U.S. stocks are seemingly joined at the hip with spot crude oil prices. That may not make a great deal of sense, but it has been the case for the past few weeks. Today NYMEX crude oil weakened to about $1.00 lower before rebounding on reports of more meetings among oil-producing co...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.