Any way one slices the numbers, the world has rapidly shifted from years of concerns about tight supplies of grains and soybeans toward questions about what to do with all of the surplus production.Yesterday while we were having a "blue sky" discussion about markets in general, a friend (who has no relationship with managed funds that we are aware of) asked us this question: If we were in charge of an actively managed fund that focused on investing in commodities, where would we place the fund's money right now? We threw out sort of a non-answer, but the question got us thinking about commodity markets from a non-commercial investment perspective.The concept of investing is commonly assumed to involve buying some asset and holding on to it...
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.