Soybean Crush Processor Margin w Calc

The soybean crush spread calculates how much profit a soybean processing plant can generate by crushing a bushel of soybeans into soybean meal and oil. The profit margin is that profit number divided by the revenue which is the price of the meal and oil outputs. I prefer to look at profit margin as opposed to just profit as it adjusts for large market fluctuations over time and is more meaningful from a business and analysis perspective.

I was not able to come up with any tradable theories based on this analysis. I added live cattle and lean hogs to try and figure out what’s going on with soybean meal reaching multi-year highs this week. It appears that move is correlated with live cattle reaching new highs. Soybean meal is rising while soybean oil is falling. Soybeans are pretty flat although slowly rising. I will continue to monitor this spread for clues about future soybean, soybean meal, and soybean oil movements. If anyone has any insights on crush spreads, please share.

The calculation of the spread is shown below: