Funds are still short a record amount of wheat futures. Without much other bad news left to throw at the wheat market, a few positive stories have apparently started to make some of the fund shorts a bit nervous.This week's USDA reports were important because they set the initial tone or benchmark numbers for the next marketing year. There was nothing bullish in the numbers, as Bob Kohlmeyer pointed out in his analysis the day that the reports were released, as well as nothing really bearish for corn or wheat. The soybean numbers are clearly bearish, but they have been for several months, and the market has continued to trade in a relatively narrow range. We still expect that will widen to the downside in the next 30-45 days. Planting progr...
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.