The June WASDE was released this morning at its regularly scheduled time of 8:30 a.m. ET. This made it the first WASDE to come out amidst the CME's expanded electronic trading hours. Some in the grain trade feared that this would allow high-speed electronic traders to trade their reactions to the report instantly, giving them an advantage over smaller cash grain interests such as country elevator operators. To address this issue, CME agreed that on the days when WASDEs and other key reports from USDA are to be released, open outcry pit trading will begin 10 minutes before they are to be released. Thus, pit trading began this morning at 7:20 a.m. CT instead of the usual 9:30 a.m. CT. Presumably, this satisfies the previous objections from...
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.