The CBOT seemed to abandon its early-week theatrics on Thursday and return to a more typical between-holidays trading pattern. Grain markets posted losses for the day with corn pulling back from its surprise rally while rains forecast for the Plains and Midwest in the next two weeks sent wheat 11-15 cents lower. The soy complex continues to impress and March soybeans settled above $15 for the second day. The soy complex rally remains driven by soyoil with questions arising about soymeal’s long-term outlook. Trading volume was quiet in the grains and oilseeds markets but live cattle futures saw another heavy-volume day with fresh contract highs. Funds were net sellers in corn and wheat, slight buyers in soybeans and soyoil, while remai...
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.