General Comments The midweek eurozone euphoria faded overnight on a downgrade of Spain's banks; financial and currency markets were back to the same old story of eurozone fears. The euro dropped 1.5 percent and the dollar was gaining 0.75 percent. Crude oil collapsed back to $82. Commodity markets broke lower as well with soybeans down as much as 25-26 cents in the night trading session. There were also some worries that a series of economic reports from China this weekend might be bearish. Warmer and drier weather forecasts, coupled with USDA announcing 410,000 MT of soybean sales to China and 120,000 MT to Egypt, brought some buyers back to the market as we approached the 9:30 a.m. open outcry opening.There were scattered but very ligh...
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.