General Comments The world survived the end of the Mayan calendar myth. Now we must see if we survive the fiscal cliff. The failure of the House Republicans to vote on Plan B last night brought early heavy selling to financial markets. That selling spilled into crude oil as well. There was broad buying across the grain and oilseed markets, but in quite light volume as we approached the holiday weekend.Other news was limited today. There were no export sales announced, but there was a correction of a reporting error from earlier in the week. USDA had reported the sale of 110,000 MT of soybeans on 18 December 18 that wasn't an export sale.Today was the last trading day for options on January futures contracts.Markets will open at 5 p.m. CT...
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.