General Comments Markets of every sort were stronger today with financials posting big gains on somewhat better-than-expected news from China and strong U.S. earnings reports. China's GDP grew at a 7.6 percent rate, which was higher than most analysts expected. J.P. Morgan also reported great earnings and that stock was gaining more than 5 percent. The dollar was weaker and crude oil was up more than a dollar with the September Globex contract touching $88.Grain and oilseed futures traded back and forth overnight but were mostly higher with wheat and soybeans leading today's charge. Weather remains mostly warm and dry with extended forecasts looking for a return to hot temperatures to end the month of July. As always, there are some disc...
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.