There’s no shortage of issues forcing market and policy participants to keep their heads on a swivel, both near term and over the horizon. The following is a roundup of some of those issues. Federal Reserve Meeting: The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) last meeting of 2023 is scheduled to begin tomorrow and extend though Wednesday. After the September meeting, the FOMC reported its consensus to increase the federal funds rate by another 25 basis points. Since the scorching hot GDP report for Q3 showed 4.9 percent annual growth, the market is second guessing that potential action. The current federal funds futures market shows a 98 percent probability of the Fed holding interest rates at the current level of 5.25 to...
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.