Although this bull market has been driven at least in part by speculative money from noncommercial traders, it could not have survived as long and as strong as it has without some sort of fundamental support. One element of that is weather.It was interesting to discover this morning that the July corn futures contract had posted a new high price of $4.15 in overnight trading, although it seemed to have traded below yesterday’s close much of the time. Meanwhile, July soybeans traded at $11.0975, which is the highest price on the continuous chart since September 2014. After the day session began, it did not take long for July soybeans to obliterate the high set a few hours earlier. At this writing, they are up $0.30 at $11.2975, having set a...
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...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.