After more than a year of sharply rising prices, softwood lumber is finally starting to show some cracks. Due to circumstances related to COVID, softwood lumber prices increased by 370 percent. Lumber mills expected 2020 to be like any other recession year in which housing starts collapse. By the time it was realized that working from home would lead to an investment boom in housing, the gap in production resulted in shortages and then problems hiring back workers. Lumber production is also stifled by beetles and wildfires. However, softwood prices may now be softening. Futures prices remain elevated well into 2022 but that could be changing. Last week, futures prices fell 14 percent and they shaved off another 4.5 percent today. U.S. fore...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.