General Comments Other than another round of South American crop estimates, there has not been much in the way of fresh input for grain and soy markets. China is on holiday, and much of Europe starts its Easter holiday on Thursday. Friday is a holiday for U.S. grain markets.The Fed released the minutes of its last FOMC meeting, and they revealed some optimism about the economy based on recent developments. However, there was general agreement that unemployment was not declining fast enough to call it a full-blown economic recovery. Concern was expressed that in fact unemployment might worsen if the economic recovery did not pick up steam. However, a large majority of committee members showed no support for any further bond buying program...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
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.