These are particularly risky times for commodity traders. Raw material markets are being pushed and pulled by geopolitical forces as well as rapidly changing and sometimes contradictory macro influences. The fundamentals of supply and demand seem to have been shunted to the sidelines. Consider the following: - The already shaky Iranian economy faces a set of U.S. sanctions, effective 4 November, that will curtail its oil exports and possibly generate a belligerent response to go along with its efforts to be the dominate power in the Middle East. Iran will surely be tempted to interfere with tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz and/or step up threats to Israel by its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Multiyear, high crude oil pric...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.