The livestock sector began the shortened trading week with favorable action.
According to Bill Moore, senior account executive with Price Futures Group in Chicago, live and feeder cattle futures saw strong gains on Tuesday. He was thankful that the bearish tone from last week didn?t carry over.
?Cattle has been in kind of a down trend,? Moore said. ?It dropped five or six dollars in the last two or three weeks after running up 25 dollars since early April. The Labor Day buying of course stopped a week or so back, and that was the reason that they took some profits in that big run up. Now, we?re expecting maybe some demand after Labor Day and the markets sent enough of that correction back up. That was good action.?
Hog futures also began the week higher as pork demand continues to be strong. Recent data from USDA showed China drove U.S. pork export growth in the first seven months of the year, but strengthening demand was occurring from Mexico.
?The hog market is a different animal than cattle,? Moore said, ?because instead of drawing from just domestic demand, the hog market draws from domestic and international demand. The hog chart has been impressive, and it?s been so since August with a run up of about 11 dollars. Again, domestic demand has been okay for the hogs, but the foreign demand has been outstanding with China and Mexico stepping up and buying our poor. On the charts, we actually left a gap three days ago. You don?t see too many open gaps on these charts. The hog market is benefiting from good demand and pushed it on the upside again.?
Over a seven-month span from January through July, China accounted for 38 percent of US pork exports, according to USDA.
