Cash fed cattle trade continued at a grudging pace on Thursday. For the week, live prices have been mainly $104-$105 with dressed sales at $165-$166.
Cattle futures were mixed on Thursday but mostly lower.
After $1.02 lower in spot Aug and 72¢ lower in new spot Oct, Live Cattle futures closed marginally mixed but mostly lower (25¢ lower to 22¢ higher).
Other than 17¢ lower in expiring Aug, Feeder Cattle futures closed an average of 86¢ lower.
Choice boxed beef cutout value was 19¢ higher Thursday afternoon at $191.91/cwt. Select was 22¢ higher at $191.34.
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Traders on Wall Street ended the month on an optimistic note, pushing major U.S. financial indices higher on Thursday. Market-friendly news, depending on how you look at it, included paltry month-to-month gains in personal income of 0.4% and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) of 0.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The PCE price index measures consumer prices paid for goods and services other than food and energy.
The friendly part of the equation comes with the notion that neither support the Fed’s goal of 2% inflation, leading some to bet against another increase in interest rates.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 55 points higher. The S&P 500 closed 14 points higher. The NASDAQ closed 60 points higher.
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Softer sales and traffic levels dampened the outlook for restaurant sales growth in July, according to the latest Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) released by the National Restaurant Association yesterday. The RPI declined for the first time in three months, declining 0.4% to 100.6.
Likewise, the NPD Group (NPD) reports customer visits to U.S. restaurants and foodservice outlets remained negative in the second quarter this year, resulting in six consecutive quarters of weak traffic performance. The U.S. foodservice industry has not experienced six consecutive quarters of no traffic growth since the recession of 2008-09.
The slowdown in restaurant and foodservice visits is most prevalent at midscale/family dining and casual dining concepts, according to NDP. Midscale registered a 4% decline in traffic for the quarter compared to same quarter year ago. Casual dining visits dropped by 3%, according to NPD’s CREST®, which daily tracks all aspects of how consumers use restaurants .
“No doubt the rising cost of a restaurant meal is weighing heavily on industry traffic performance,” says Bonnie Riggs, NPD Group restaurant industry analyst. “The vast majority of consumers give restaurants fairly low ratings on affordability compared to other customer satisfaction attributes.”
According to NDP, the average check at foodservice outlets rose by 2.6%—the largest increase in several years—reflecting higher menu prices.
“Operators will need to be critical in increasing prices and make sure that when they do raise prices the quality of the food and experience is commensurate with their customer’s cost,” Riggs says.