The Wall Street Journal analyzed how the S&P 500 reacted on the days President Trump tweeted more optimistically about trade policy; the argument being that when the stock market is nervous, he tweets something positive to improve market confidence, such as retracting his plan to increase tariffs on China after the market reacted badly. That question about tweet impacts could be asked of commodity markets. We used the same tweet events identified by the Journal: 1. 10 April 2018: ‘Great progress’ on trade talks 2. 4 May 2018: ‘Look forward’ to meeting with Chinese President 3. 1 November 2018: Trade talks are ‘moving along nicely’ 4. 3 December 2018: ‘Very good things will happen&rsqu...
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.