Traders spent most of Monday preparing for the February WASDE report to be released Tuesday at Noon ET, which meant that the CBOT saw mostly weaker or range-bound trade. The exceptions were the corn and livestock markets, where traders remain more bullish. In the case of corn, it’s the Argentine weather and strong U.S. export demand that is driving price expectations higher while the cattle markets saw more of a technical bounce for the day. The soy complex remains under pressure from the large Brazilian crop and ample world supplies, while wheat futures fell for the day on technical weakness and pre-WASDE positioning. The focus of tomorrow’s report will primarily be on the South American corn and soybean crops and U.S. export d...
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.