Cattle Rally Triple Digits across the Front Months
Front month live cattle futures were ended the day with $0.80 to $1.87 gains led by the Feb contract. Feeders were also in the black, though were weaker having closed $0.17 to $1.05 stronger. Last week’s cash sales were near $171. The CME Feeder Cattle Index was a penny stronger to $219.81.
The monthly Cattle on Feed report counted 12.006m head, a 2.7% increase from last year’s Dec 1 count. Placements were listed at 1.868 million head, a 1.9% decrease yr/yr. Nov marketings were 1.751m head, a 7.4% decrease.
USDA’s Wholesale Boxed Beef prices weakened in Tuesday morning’s update, with Choice down by 48 cents and Select 45 cents lower. The weekly update from USDA showed beef production fell 4.1% wk/wk and 4.6% compared to the same week last year – with 524m lbs last week. The week’s cattle slaughter was 621k head for a yearly total of 31.737 million head. That compares to 552k head for the same week last year and 33.122 million for ‘22s YTD kill.
Dec 23 Cattle closed at $170.575, up $0.525,
Feb 24 Cattle closed at $170.400, up $1.875,
Apr 24 Cattle closed at $173.450, up $1.325,
Jan 24 Feeder Cattle closed at $223.550, up $0.800
Mar 24 Feeder Cattle closed at $224.575, up $0.175
On the date of publication, Alan Brugler did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
