Thursday’s hog market will trade the cold storage report, and export bookings data from the week that ended 3/17. Yesterday, the deferred months set new contract highs as lean hog futures rallied triple digits. For June hogs that is now $124.45. The April and May contracts also rallied triple digits for the midweek session but their respective Feb 23rd highs are still intact. The National Average Base Hog price was $107.14 this afternoon, down by 54 cents. The CME Lean Hog Index was $101.77 on 3/21, down by 3 cents.
The monthly Cold Storage data from NASS showed 480.354m lbs of pork in the freezer for February. That was up nearly 50m lbs from January, but was still the lightest for Feb since 2004. Belly stocks specifically were 50.1399m lbs, or a 33.5% increase yr/yr.
Pork cutout futures were also triple digits higher on Wednesday, ending the session up by $2.05 to $4.32 in the front months. USDA’s National Pork Carcass Cutout Value for Wednesday was $0.32 weaker to $106.39. USDA estimates the WTD FI hog slaughter at 478k head. That is down form 480k last week and from 488k head during the same week last year.
Apr 22 Hogs closed at $102.550, up $2.300,
May 22 Hogs closed at $114.650, up $3.425
Apr 22 Pork Cutout closed at $108.175, up $2.050,
/AI%20(artificial%20intelligence)/Businessman%20touching%20the%20brain%20working%20of%20Artificial%20Intelligence%20(AI)%20Automation%20by%20Suttiphong%20Chandaeng%20via%20Shutterstock.jpg)
/Intel%20Corp_%20Santa%20Clara%20campus-by%20jejim%20via%20Shutterstock.jpg)
/EV%20in%20showroom%20by%20Robert%20Way%20via%20Shutterstock.jpg)
