General Comments Markets started the Sunday evening session very strong, with soybeans posting double-digit gains and wheat and corn 4-6 cents higher. Those early gains, however, did not hold through the night and markets were unchanged to just slightly higher by this morning's close. There was more concern over the Easter weekend about eurozone debt issues now sliding over into Spain, but Europe is still mostly on holiday today. Europe's financial markets were mixed. U.S. financial futures were sharply lower overnight following last Friday's disappointing U.S. jobs report. Unemployment was pegged at 8.2 percent, but the numbers also showed that not many new jobs were created and many people simply have left the work force. Crude oil w...
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.