The CBOT came under pressure Thursday from a combination of end-of-year profit taking and rains that are pushing into southern Brazil. Traders were eager to book profits in ag commodities after their Christmas-time rally with only two trading days left in the year. Commodities have been excellent investments this year and funds are looking to close the books with above-normal returns. The proximate catalyst for Thursday’s selling, however, was rains that fell across southern Brazil on Wednesday. Brazil’s Parana and Mato Grosso do Sul states received 0.25-1 inches of rain overnight and central/northern Brazil received as much as 2.5 inches. The 7-day forecast calls for better chances of rain across central Brazil that will pus...
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.