The WASDE report was largely neutral but the bulls got ahead of themselves beforehand and then got put on the defensive after its release. The WASDE didn’t provide any real news except it set up expectations by the bulls that surely USDA’s January report will make upward adjustments to U.S. soy and corn exports, and perhaps downward predictions about prospective South American output. When the report failed to meet expectations, profit-taking ensued with the hope of buying back in later at lower levels. The day was not a total bust, certainly not in the wheat pits, but it reminds us that expectations and official reporting often do not align. For that matter, official reporting often does not align with its officialdom. USDA st...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...