Rains in Brazil and Argentina heavily influenced the CBOT to start the week and sent the entire soy complex sharply lower. The precipitation also weighed on corn futures, which settled essentially unchanged, but was offset by the continuing rally in wheat futures. Wheat was again sharply higher and broke technical resistance levels as USDA reported new export sales to China. Beyond that, funds are scrambling to cover their massive short positions, which is driving the highly-technical wheat rally. The outlook for the week features weaker/sideways trade for the soy complex, more upside potential for wheat, and likely choppy but firmer trade for corn. Corn export inspections last week were huge and well above seasonal norms at over 1.1 MMT &...
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.