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: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.