Weak macroeconomic markets and good planting progress in Monday’s Crop Progress report sent the CBOT sharply lower on Tuesday. Corn and soybeans led the way lower with oilseed breaking technical support in early trade and subsequently falling 25-36 cents by the closing bell. Weakness in soyoil and soymeal helped contribute to the day’s weakness in soybeans, as did widespread bearishness in global oilseed markets. Wheat futures were mixed with the MEGEX contract posting slight gains on the still-delayed planting in the Northern Plains while KCBT wheat settled with small losses and the Chicago market dropped in sympathy with corn and soybeans. Funds were strong net sellers for the day in the major contracts but did cautiously expa...
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.