Last week’s CBOT trade rightly featured significant rallies as the U.S. weather forecast remains stubbornly hot and dry in both near- and long-term forecasts but today’s trade featured a pause amid the drought-concern rally. Futures were somewhat overextended after last week’s gains and traders elected to assess the situation and see if this week’s weather remains hot and dry before adding more “weather risk” premia to prices. As such, one might call the day’s session the calm before what is likely to be another drought-induced weather market rally. Funds were cautious net buyers in corn, old crop soybeans, and SRW wheat while selling small volumes of KCBT and MGEX wheat and soy products. The...
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.