The last trading day of January saw a continuation of the story that sparked the 2020/21 bull market: Chinese buying. News of a massive corn sale to China sent corn futures to a new contract high and a bullish upside breakout while wheat and soybean futures traded mostly sideways in their respective trading ranges. Funds were net buyers in corn, wheat, and soybeans while aggressively shedding the longs they obtained earlier this week in the cattle markets. China bought 2.108 MMT of 2020/21 corn yesterday, which is the largest daily corn export sale since a 3.7-MMT sale to the USSR in 1991! USDA also reported that China secured 132,000 MT of soybeans for 2020/21 delivery. Today’s daily export sales announcement brings China&rsqu...
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.