Markets were considerably more relaxed today amid consolidating trade that saw both sides of yesterday’s closes before finishing mostly lower. However, today’s losses were small for the most part compared with yesterday’s gains. General Comments As previously noted, USDA’s May WASDE with its first real look at the following crop year often sets off a blast of futures market volatility, and yesterday’s release at 12 p.m. (DST) is a case in point. USDA foresees increased crush and exports lowering U.S. 2015/16 ending soybean stocks more than expected and U.S. 2016/17 stocks much more than expected. It indicates the same demand factors will shrink world soybean stocks as well despite another year of record production in 2016/17. These bullis...
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.