Cattle futures settled mostly nominally lower on Monday, following a two-side session with early pressure, a surge in support for Feeder Cattle and then running out of steam.
Except for 15¢ higher in the back contract, Live Cattle futures closed an average of 41¢ lower (5¢ to 62¢ lower).
Other than 85¢ lower in the back contract, Feeder Cattle futures closed narrowly mixed, mostly to the down side (22¢ higher to 37¢ lower).
Choice boxed beef cutout value was 6¢ lower on Monday afternoon at $205.53/cwt. Select was 31¢ lower at $185.66.
******************************
Major U.S. financial indices closed higher on Monday, supported by bullishness in energy and tech stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 56 points higher. The S&P 500 closed 8 points higher. The NASDAQ closed 35 points higher.
******************************
“There seems little doubt that herd expansion continued in 2017, albeit at a slower pace than 2016,” says Derrell Peel, Extension livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, in his market comments this week.
When the January Cattle inventory report comes out at the end of January, Peel expects the numbers will show that the beef cowherd grew 1.5-2.0% this year. Higher expansion rates are possible, but he just doesn’t see it in the current data. Likewise, a lower rate of expansion is possible, but Peel says that would mean an unusually large percentage of bred heifers available on January 1 of this year never entered the herd…again, unlikely.
For perspective, there were 31.2 million beef cows at the beginning of this year. That represented 7.2% growth in the beef cowherd the start of 2014.