Agricultural futures traders are aware that futures prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and soy products tend to go down at a much faster rate than they rise. A recent case in point is the first new crop contract month for the 2018 U.S. corn crop, December. Its highest close so far in 2018 was $4.2625 on 23 May. The same contract then finished at $4.0125 yesterday (4 June), a drop of $0.25 or about 6 percent in eight trading days. By historical standards, that may not be a very large price decline during a limited period. However, it is made to seem larger by December corn’s crawling pace of three months to climb from $4.00 to reach its 2018 high close. The rapid decrease of the December corn price has essentially been triggered b...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.