Any remaining market bulls certainly must now consider themselves "snakebit" following the CME's decision to declare force majeure and suspend the delivery process against the May futures contracts. It is the delivery process -- or it used to be the delivery process -- that would finally sort out any wide discrepancies between the cash market and the futures market. Convergence was the popular term used to describe this process, and convergence has been absent from the markets for several years for several reasons. Remember that the lack of convergence in wheat actually resulted in congressional hearings on the process. Most people in the industry don't even understand convergence and we were trying to explain to Congress why it does or d...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Key Market Insights Geopolitical Limbo: Geopolitical risk remained a key driver across global commodity markets today. President Trump stated that the Iran memorandum of understanding is not yet final and warned that military action could resume if negotiations fail. Both sides continue w...
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.