Cattle and hog futures are lodged in massive bullish uptrends that seem to have no end in sight. All three major livestock contracts posted fresh contract highs this afternoon with open interest and trading volume rising as well. In contrast, the grain markets chopped sideways with the day’s largest gains coming from wheat. Dry conditions in the U.S. Plains are threatening the HRW crop and a historically tight wheat-corn spread is adding to wheat’s bullish outlook. Corn futures chopped higher on Wednesday while the soy complex reversed course and ended lower, mostly due to soyoil weakness. Funds are thought to have bought 8,000 contracts of corn and 6,000 contracts of wheat while selling 5,000 contracts of soybeans and 6,000 con...
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.