Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 09/08/17 at 13:07 UTC

UPM Plywood, Arctic Astronautics and Huld announce today a joint mission to launch the first ever wooden satellite, WISA WOODSATTM, into Earth’s orbit by the end of 2021. WISA Woodsat will go where no wood has gone before. With a mission to gather data on the behavior and durability of plywood over an extended period in the harsh temperatures, vacuum and radiation of space in order to assess the use of wood materials in space structures. WISA Woodsat is a nanosatellite designed and built by Arctic Astronautics, and it is based on the Kitsat educational satellite. The satellite measures roughly 10 x 10 x 10 cm and weighs one kilogram. A suite of on-board sensors, including two cameras will be used to monitor the specially coated WISA®-Birch plywood.

American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index rose 2.1% in June after increasing 1.2% in May. In June, the index equaled 116.5 (2015=100) compared with 114.1 in May. “While the tonnage index increased in both May and June, it remains in recession territory,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “The index continues to fall from a year earlier and is off 1.9% from its recent peak in September 2022. A multitude of factors have caused a recession in freight, including stagnant consumer spending on goods, lower home construction, falling factory output, and shippers consolidating freight into fewer shipments compared with the frenzy during the goods buying spree at the height of the pandemic. However, the magnitude of the year-over-year declines is improving, perhaps pointing to a bottom in the freight market.” Compared with June 2022, the SA index decreased 0.8%, which was the fourth straight year-over-year decrease. In May, the index was down 2.4% from a year earlier.

West Texas Intermediate futures were little changed after dropping 2.1 percent to a one-week low on Monday. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 32.83 million barrels a day in September, up 120,000 barrels a day from August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Libyan production is set to recover from a five-month low as the nation’s biggest field restarts following a brief halt. “With news of Libyan output looking to recover back to the 1 million-barrel-a-day level, oil bulls need to hold out for another bout of news on geopolitics,” said Jens Naervig Pedersen, senior analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. Click Read More below for additional detail.