Current grain and soy futures markets remind us of two old market clichés. The first is, “bears make money, bulls make money, but hogs get slaughtered.” The second is, “you never go broke taking a profit.” It appears that some fund managers may have forgotten or ignored both sayings. They have stubbornly held on to long positions in corn futures despite the considerable fundamental and technical signs during the past few weeks that it was time to exit those positions. To be fair, there has been a fair amount of fund liquidation in recent days. At yesterday’s close, though, funds were still estimated to be long at least 100,000 contracts with aggregated losses that are still growing. We can be rightfully...
Infrastructure investment due diligence
On behalf of a Canadian oilseed processer WPI's team provided market analysis, econometric modeling and financial due diligence in support of a $24 million-dollar investment in a Ukrainian crush plant. Consistent with WPI's findings, local production to supply the plant and the facility's output have expanded exponentially since the investment. WPI has conducted parallel work on behalf of U.S., South American and European clients, both private and public, in the agri-food space.
The corn and soy complex closed higher, with the wheat market mixed, as winter wheat closed up but spring wheat and livestock ended lower. Part of the strength for corn and soybeans may have been a weather premium, as crop planting has started out fast but warm weather has been slow to develop...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Reflect for a moment on what you eat. There is a lot of advice out there in the ether about what you should eat, but really, what do you currently eat and how much? The good people at the USDA have some data for you, to help you answer that question. USDA says that we eat quite a bit of meat. L...