General Comments The main topic for market discussion is Thursday's quarterly stocks and planting intentions reports from USDA, of course. However, a second topic -- the unusually cold weather from the Rockies to the East Coast and from Canada to the Gulf -- is elbowing its way into the market's talk. March 2012 will go down as one of the coldest on record. April is approaching rapidly, but the northern third of the Corn Belt lies under a blanket of snow. Where snow is not an issue, soil temperatures remain far below what is needed for corn planting. After a brief moderation, another cold snap is in the offing next week. Weather models hint at a warm-up beginning in mid-April, but that is a long way off for much confidence.It is safe to...
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.