It’s far too early to say the bear market is dead. It is interesting, however, to watch how some of these commodity markets have exploded higher without any really disastrous supply-side news. A story in today’s Financial Times under the headline “Commodities beating global bonds and stocks in 2016” reports that the Bloomberg Commodity Index is up 11.1 percent for the year. This compares with Barclay’s Global Aggregate Bond Index, the U.S. S&P, and the FTSE All World Global Equities Index, which are up 6.4 percent, 4 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.This is a dramatic change from the commodity picture of the past few years. Crude oil that was going to drop to $15-20/barrel is trading right at $50 today. Soybean futures were headed...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.