Cattle futures softened with the week’s weaker cash prices.
Feeder Cattle futures closed an average of 80¢ lower, from 2¢ lower in waning spot May to $1.32 lower.
Live Cattle futures closed an average of 33¢ lower, except for an average of 8¢ higher in the front two contracts.
Negotiated cash fed cattle trade ranged from slow trade on light demand to mostly inactive on very light demand through Thursday afternoon, according to the Agricultural Marketing service.
Although too few to trend, there were a few live trades in Kansas at $136/cwt. and a few dressed trades in Nebraska at $224.
Established live cattle prices so far this week are $1 lower in the Southern Plains at $137, steady to $2 lower in Nebraska at $140 and $2 lower in the western Corn Belt at $140. Dressed prices are $3 lower in Nebraska at $223.
Choice Boxed beef cutout value was $1.04 higher Thursday afternoon at $263.97/cwt. Select was 37¢ higher at $244.43.
Corn futures closed mixed, 3¢ to 5¢ lower in new-crop contracts and then mostly fractionally higher to 1¢ higher.
Soybean futures closed 30¢ to 45¢ higher through Jan ’23 and then mostly 13¢ to 24¢ higher, helped along by oil prices.
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Major U.S. financial indices bounced higher Thursday, likely driven by oversold conditions and positive employment news. Initial unemployment insurance claims for the week ending May 14 of 210,000 was 8,000 fewer than the previous week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 516 points higher. The S&P 500 closed 79 points higher. The NASDAQ was up 305 points.
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The Creighton University Rural Mainstreet Index (RMI) declined to 57.7 in May from 62.0 a month earlier but remained above growth neutral for the eighteenth consecutive month.
“Much like the nation, the growth in the Rural Mainstreet economy is slowing. Supply chain disruptions from transportation bottlenecks and labor shortages continue to constrain growth. Farmers and bankers are bracing for escalating interest rates — both long-term and short-term,” says Ernie Goss, the Jack A. MacAllister Chair in Regional Economics at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business.
The RMI is based on a monthly survey of bank CEOs in rural areas of a 10-state region dependent on agriculture and/or energy.
The region’s farmland price index for May declined to 72.0 from 80.0 in April, marking the twentieth straight month that the index was above growth neutral. Over the past several months, the Creighton survey has registered the most consistent and strongest growth in farmland prices since the survey began in 2006.
On average, cash rents have risen by 9.6% to $250 per acre for non-irrigated crop land over the past 12 months, according to bankers.
Escalating costs of farm inputs pushed borrowing in the region to its highest reading since May 2020.