The CBOT was mixed on the start of the last full trading week of 2024 with exports and South American weather being the primary variables to affect market dynamics. The corn market turned higher on the strong export pace and on some hints of dryness emerging in south-central Argentina. The KC wheat market too pushed higher, though futures could only mark time with an inside day on the charts, despite a strong, policy-driven rally in Matif wheat futures. The soy complex saw more pressure on Monday with soyoil futures dipping further amid weaker palm oil and crude oil values and with soybean seeing pressure from increased Brazilian crop estimates. The day’s biggest technical moves came from the livestock market, where both cattle contracts an...
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.