The Market Soybeans were in the green on Friday morning until USDA released its bearish December WASDE report. Traders had expected U.S. carryover stocks to be reduced based on robust exports, but instead the agency raised global soybean ending stocks slightly. Croatia may have knocked Brazil out of the World Cup, but USDA only made minor tweaks to its South American soybean forecast. The report also messed with soyoil and soymeal (see below). The January soybean contract had hit a 2.5 month high the day before USDA’s report based on optimism over Chinese demand, and a view that Argentina’s output will be cut. For the week, the spot month contracts are up 45.25 cents for soybeans, a robust $47.50 for soymeal, and down 5...
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.
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...