The June retail sales report beat consensus expectations, rising 0.6 percent. Moreover, it was a strong report, with 10 out of 13 of the sales categories increasing. The largest increase was in the auto sector, a traditionally volatile category. June sales were up 1.2 percent, which came after a 3.8 percent drop in May, though the May report numbers were revised up in the June report to a much smaller drop. Astonishingly, auto sales are now up 6.5 percent over the past year. Excluding auto sales, and the two other volatile categories, building materials and gas stations, the “core” retail sales posted a 0.5 percent increase. These “core” sales are up 4.5 percent in the past year, which is above the 3.9 pe...
What You Need to Know Today: Excitement over China’s agreement to purchase $17 billion of U.S. ag commodities subsided, as traders are cautious amid the yet-unspecified allocation of those purchases. Monday’s Crop Progress report did not significantly change the narrative for corn...
There has been more analysis of the Trump-Xi meeting last week than decades worth of papers written on the fall of Rome and the assassination of JFK. Optimists highlight the pageantry and showmanship; pessimists complain nothing major was accomplished. The divergence of the official assessments...
As WPI reported, Presidents Trump and Xi held a bilateral summit last week (World Perspectives), the first since 2017, with some uncertainty over the outcome, though Trump commented on some “fantastic” trade deals. Over the weekend, more information was released on those agreements,...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.