Profit taking, good weather and zero technical support left the CBOT to trade lower today with only corn managing to close a few cents higher. With the ongoing trade issues and increasingly high odds of good U.S. corn and soybean crops again, bullish news is tough to come by. Brazil’s second-crop corn dryness is almost the only bullish factor left, and the market is tired of (i.e., no longer) worrying about it. Outside the ag markets, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices are up fractionally, while the VIX is up 10 points and COMEX gold futures are steady. The U.S. dollar index is up 16 points as G-7 leaders discuss trade at their Canada meeting and as the market braces for the Fed’s interest rate decision next week. Crude oil...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.