The CBOT capped a volatile week with aggressive bear spreading in corn and sharply lower days in wheat and soybeans. The USDA’s reports from Thursday continued to drive market action on Friday with traders adjusting to the new expectations of record-large soybean acreage and 14-year lows in wheat stocks. Funds were net sellers for the day and liquidated some 6,000 contracts of wheat, 14,000 contracts of corn, 18,000 contracts of soybeans, and 10,000 contracts of soymeal. Funds were, however, net buyers in the soyoil market and added 8,000 contracts to their existing long position. Another day, another USDA report. This time, it was the Grain and Oilseed Crushing report, which featured a surprising decline in soybean crushings...
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.