DTN Closing Livestock Comments

GENERAL COMMENTS: Moderate cash cattle trading finally surfaced leading into the Christmas break with most live deals marked at $119, generally steady with last week. A few scattered dressed transactions were turned in Iowa and Nebraska, steady/firm with last Friday. According to the closing report, the national hog base is $0.56 lower compared with the Prior Day settlement ($40-$45.14, weighted average $44.07). Spot March corn closed up 3 1/4 cents, a modest rebound from Thursday's implosion, albeit on lighter volume that put prices down 6 1/4 cents for the week. Like several commodities, corn price was influenced this week by outside markets and investor nervousness in general as the Dow Jones Industrials fell to new lows for the year. Ending its worst week in 10 years, the Dow settled 421 points lower. The Nasdaq lost 195.

LIVE CATTLE: Live futures settled on a mixed basis (i.e., mostly up 62 cents to off 17 cents) with nearbys gaining on deferreds. The front end was somewhat supported by reports of generally steady examples of feedlot business. Beef cut-outs closed significantly higher with the choice up $1.58 ($214.05) and select up $2.24 ($207.50). Box demand was called moderate to good with light offerings.

MONDAY'S CASH CATTLE CALL: Steady to $1 higher. Monday activity is always slow, limited to fed supply assessment. But the pre-holiday reality will make early week doings especially lackluster.

FEEDER CATTLE: Action here was paint-drying slow with many commercials and specs already gone for the holiday. Settlements were narrowly mixed, up 7 to off 17 cents. CME cash feeder Index for 12/20: $145.89, up $0.15.

LEAN HOGS. It turned out to be one of those late-week sessions where the start was better than the finish. Lean contracts traded higher in the early going, but long liquidation soon surfaced. Also pushing futures down were the results of the monthly cold storage report, which said that frozen pork supplies were down 11% from the previous month but up 1% from last year. The situation was particularly dire for pork bellies, with supply up 38% from last month and 5% from last year. Once the limited dust settled, lean settlements landed on a mixed basis, up 45 cents to off $1.25. Spot February caught the most selling interest. Carcass value closed moderately higher, supported by better demand for all primals except hams and bellies. The cut-out totaled $71.32, up $0.73. (DTN Projected lean index for CME cash lean index for 12/20: $53.87, off $0.78) CME cash lean index for 12/19: $54.65, off $0.35.

MONDAY'S CASH HOG CALL: Steady to $1 lower. With many plants dark for the holiday, early week buying interest will no doubt be very limited.

John Harrington can be reached at harringtonsfotm@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @feelofthemarket

(CZ)

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