May kicked off with Saturday’s running of the 147th Kentucky Derby, arguably the most famous horse race in history, and the Medina Spirit won with a time of 2 minutes 1.02 seconds. On Sunday night, the CBOT seemed determined to match Medina Spirit’s pace and started this week’s market race with a gap-higher opening. Corn futures posted a new contract high overnight, and soybeans and wheat followed closely behind. Most CBOT contracts ended lower for the day, despite the strong overnight markets. Today is the first day of the CBOT’s new, expanded price limits for commodities listed below. That, combined with higher margin requirements for these commodities means some funds and traders are having to reduce their...
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.