General Comments Markets were firm to start the week. The new trading hours took effect yesterday. The markets now open at 7 p.m., close between 7:45 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., then trade until 1:15 p.m. (all CDT). Wheat started strong last night, but corn and soybeans were lower. Soybean futures made a quick move to 13-14 cents higher when China's markets opened without much weakness. Wheat was strong on more talk of China business plus another cold weather forecast for later this week as far south as Oklahoma. Corn is still stuck in the death throes from the USDA stocks report.USDA will release its April supply and demand revisions on Wednesday, 10 April at 11 a.m. CDT. This will be the first WASDE since the fabled March quarterly stocks re...
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.