The Ever.Ag Podcast

Hog Talk – July 23, 2024


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In the latest edition of the Hog Talk podcast from Ever.Ag Insights, experts explain the recent recovery in hog futures prices. Also, purchases for school lunch programs and exports to Mexico helped ham prices hit a two-year high. Will the US and Mexico maintain a solid trade relationship under new leadership? What does that mean to the hog industry? How can producers solidify their risk management plans?

Join host Mike McGinnis and panelists Billy Polovin and Karl Hoffman for an insightful discussion.

Questions or comments? Topics you’d like to hear us discuss? Contact us at [email protected].

Show Transcript

(Transcript auto-generated)

00;00;00;10 – 00;00;08;20

VOICEOVER
Future trading involves risk and is not suitable for all investors. Content provided in this segment is meant for educational purposes and is not a solicitation to buy or sell commodities.

00;00;08;22 – 00;00;28;04

MIKE
Hello and welcome to Hog Talk, brought to you by ever AI insights. Each week we talk with subject matter experts on news and topics affecting the hog market. I’m your host, Mike McGinnis. And today is Tuesday, July 23rd. Our guest, Carl Hoffman, average trader. And Billy Polman, senior director of risk management. We want to say hello and welcome to both of you.

00;00;28;08 – 00;00;29;11

BILLY
Thank you. Thanks for having.

00;00;29;11 – 00;00;55;27

MIKE
Us, Mike. You bet. And we are glad you’re here. We want to talk about the hog market first off, and let’s take a look at today’s prices. The August contract up over a dollar at 9394. The October lean hog futures up almost a dollar. Up 95 at 7695. So guys the hog futures market is rallying again. The front month contracts jumped 4% into July expiration after falling since late April.

00;00;55;28 – 00;00;58;21

MIKE
What’s driving the rally? Let’s start with you first, Billy.

00;00;58;22 – 00;01;30;15

BILLY
Well, you know, we’ve had a great rally off our contract lows. I think what’s driving the rally is just the fact that I think the market was oversold to the downside, and that primarily came from a managed money short position that put a lot of pressure into this market. I mean, when you look at contract lows of October at 6805 December down to 6182, those are marks that we only achieved because of the short fund position pushing our futures to those levels.

00;01;30;15 – 00;01;55;02

BILLY
When you start to look at the discounts that were priced in at those levels versus where the CME index was trading of $88 or around there at that time, you’re pricing in a $20 discount in the October, you know, a 26 plus dollar discount into December. You know, those alone were caused by that managed money, short position and the rebound off those lows.

00;01;55;02 – 00;02;30;08

BILLY
I don’t think was necessarily due to any fantastic news that came back into our market. It was just a correction to bring us back to what I would call more fair pricing. The fact that October, you know, is now trading around the 77.5 mark that puts it into a discount that is fair for this time of year compared to the index, maybe not compared to the August, but at least compared to the where the index is and what seasonal breaks we can, you know, look forward to as we kind of head into what should be our seasonal break from our August, you know, highs to our October expiration.

00;02;30;11 – 00;02;43;27

MIKE
It reminds me of the saying that if you push a beach ball down in the water far enough and you let it go, it only has one place to go, right? That’s up. So it sounds like the hog market has done. It’s pushed it down far enough. It’s had one way to go. What’s the story, Billy? In the cash market?

00;02;43;27 – 00;03;12;02

BILLY
Yeah, the cash hogs, obviously we’ve sent back from our highs. The highs that we set back in, you know, the April time frame where we reached our weighted average of the national daily direct cash market, up around 93, 77. You know, we’re now sitting in the 84 to $85 range. I think that setback comes because of the fact that, you know, and this is going to be a discussion amongst our industry for a while here, and that is that we have the supplies, the supplies of pigs are out there.

00;03;12;02 – 00;03;42;22

BILLY
And when you have supply coming out of Packer, they don’t need to pay up for those pigs. The pigs just happened to fall into their laps, quote unquote. And I think that’s kind of what’s happening here, is that the Packers are having the ability to have these pigs be bought at their price right now, and that’s the reason that a cash market sits between, let’s just say, you know, 82.5 and 85.5, you know, seasonally moving forward here, I would suspect that we’ll continue to see a little bit further declines in this cash market.

00;03;42;22 – 00;03;51;16

BILLY
Is it going to be something that, you know, looks terrible? I don’t think we get to that point. But I do see the cash market having a softer trend as we move into the fall.

00;03;51;17 – 00;04;03;17

MIKE
Well, Carl, last week the pork cut out rallied 4.5% to average a little over $100 per 100 weight. Belly market provided much of that gain. Why is July a strong month for the bellies?

00;04;03;19 – 00;04;22;10

KARL
Well, for several reasons. The first being, you know, July’s a pretty popular vacation time for families, you know, with their summer vacation. So you have a lot of people hit the road, you know, they frequent fast food restaurants on the road and traveling up. And then they also go and buy a little extra groceries for, you know, the time away many times.

00;04;22;10 – 00;04;43;14

KARL
And, you know, bacon being included. The other is, you know, where you have tomatoes are now finally, you know, getting ripe on the vine. So the BLT season starts to kick in. And that carries really through the month of August. And even into, you know, the first part of September. So I think the combination of those two factors really, you know, is a good reason why the belly market’s stronger during that time frame.

00;04;43;19 – 00;05;09;04

KARL
I think you’re dead on. In fact, just last week, my family did exactly what you just mentioned. All of those points were right on ham exports, pre buying for school lunches or getting credit for ham prices reaching new highs for the year. Mexico is a major recipient of U.S. hog and pork exports. This week we had some news come out with Mexico’s newly elected president and made it clear she wasn’t happy with Donald Trump being critical of her choice of Marcelo Ebrard as the economy minister.

00;05;09;04 – 00;05;11;00

KARL
What does it mean for the hog industry?

00;05;11;03 – 00;05;30;26

KARL
Well, the last thing we want is tension with Mexico when it comes to pork, because they are a huge customer of ours. They buy a tremendous amount of hams this year. They’re actually suffering through a pretty brutal drought. And I know their hog prices are very high. And even as we speak, you know, Mexico’s been a very aggressive buyer of U.S. ham.

00;05;30;26 – 00;05;37;12

KARL
So we’ve got a hammer price since now, actually at a two and a half year high right now. And a lot of that is attributed to Mexico by.

00;05;37;13 – 00;05;51;09

MIKE
Recently, I was struck by just how much U.S. pork is going to Mexico. Over 200 semi loads of U.S. pork cross the Mexico U.S. border daily. So to your point, Mexico is just not another export market right now.

00;05;51;09 – 00;06;10;15

KARL
They represent a huge percentage of our total exports. And, you know, they’ve been a very solid customer for years. And yeah, we want the political environment to be amicable and getting along. So, you know, whenever you start to see any kind of, you know, tension that comes between us and Mexico, it makes me a little bit nervous.

00;06;10;16 – 00;06;24;17

MIKE
Let’s move now to the upcoming reports that you’re watching. Cold storage is going to be coming out this Thursday. Give us a feel for what that report might or might not say, and how it might impact or not the hog market. Let’s start there. Well, I.

00;06;24;17 – 00;06;53;07

KARL
Always keep an eye on the valley inventories. We actually had a surprise move out movement of values. And back in the month of May, I keep a very close tab. We are probably, I would say, you know, leaning on the historical high side of frozen valley inventories. Last year, we had kind of the same scenario, but I’ve kind of learned that really paying too much attention to that can kind of work against you because, you know, last year, I think the market in general had completely written off a rally in the Valley market because of those inventories.

00;06;53;07 – 00;07;12;02

KARL
But yet we still saw a pallet market that’s rated well over two buck for a number of weeks. So the inventories are tight. And the last report and I just don’t see us, you know, having the ability to get a lot into the freezer for the ham. So again I think even the ham inventories can be pretty critical as we kind of think about our fall market.

00;07;12;02 – 00;07;28;29

KARL
You know the ham market, that’s kind of where it finds its spark on the domestic side. And you just kind of look at even where ham prices are now. You know, if we are running low on ham inventories, that should make for, I think, a pretty positive outlook for the ham market this fall.

00;07;28;29 – 00;07;45;25

MIKE
On Monday, USDA estimated hog slaughter at 459,000 head. That was down from 478,000 last week, and down from 459,967 had a year ago. Billy, what does this tell you? And do you see this lower kill amount continuing?

00;07;45;27 – 00;08;12;21

BILLY
No, that was so. Some packing plants have what we call quote unquote floating holidays. This Monday actually had a floating holiday which caused that kill disruption. In fact, I do not see kills becoming lighter. In fact, they will start to grow not only seasonally when we typically start to see our kills grow. As we get into the middle part of August, we’ll start to see kills, you know, up above the two five level.

00;08;12;21 – 00;08;32;18

BILLY
And then when we move into September, we’ll probably see kills grow up into the two six plus level. Those are non holiday weeks of course. And in through the end of the year we probably won’t see a kill lighter than two six and even have a few kills up around the two seven area. So kills will continue to increase here.

00;08;32;20 – 00;09;09;01

BILLY
I think that you know, when we do see a one day down kill like that, we can associate it with a floating holiday. Even if you look at last Friday’s kill where we saw some lighter numbers, that was because one of the East Coast plants from Smithfield was down. That took 35,000 head out of the equation. So I think these, you know, lighter kills are just a function of, you know, plant disruption but kills, you know, from now till the end of the year, we’ll have a seasonal increase until we get at least to, I would say, you know, into the first quarter of 2025 and.

00;09;09;01 – 00;09;14;25

MIKE
Our final segment, the so what segment, Billy, what can producers and processors take from this conversation today?

00;09;14;27 – 00;09;34;11

BILLY
I think the fact that we’ve had a nice rebound in prices on the futures board, you know, the negativity that was being talked about when we saw futures down at contract lows can subside a little bit, but you should still be on your toes. You know, the fact that we’ve gotten, you know, prices back to what I’ll call more respectable levels.

00;09;34;11 – 00;09;58;06

BILLY
Anyone who didn’t have a chance to put on some hedges, this is certainly an opportunity to start putting on again hedges that might, you know, help it in the case that we do continue to move back down towards contract lows. You know, the other thing on my mind is how can we do that with, you know, allowing the market to continue to rally, participate on those rallies to cover our production?

00;09;58;06 – 00;10;18;25

BILLY
We want to do so in a manner that allows us to participate to the downside without capping some upside gains. So, you know, LRP policies, LGM policies, those would be the policies that fall more into line with what I would probably put on as a producer as opposed to, you know, selling futures and or selling calls that limit your upside.

00;10;18;25 – 00;10;21;25

BILLY
If we were to continue to see some upside movement on the futures.

00;10;22;02 – 00;10;24;02

MIKE
And Carl, would you like to add to the segment?

00;10;24;05 – 00;10;40;28

KARL
I would just kind of almost echo what Bill is saying, that risk management, I think is going to be very important. It’s been a tough couple of years here for the producer. If you look at the prices, you know, reflected on the board, we’re still looking. I think it’s some adversity moving forward and ways to, you know, kind of mitigate that adversity.

00;10;40;28 – 00;10;50;15

KARL
I think it’s going to be very important, especially with, you know, lenders and just the whole risk profile is still out there. So I think risk management is going to be very important, very good.

00;10;50;15 – 00;10;56;28

MIKE
Carl Hoffman, ever ag trader, and Billy Polman, every senior director of management. Thanks guys for joining us today.

00;10;56;29 – 00;10;57;25

BILLY
Thank you. Appreciate it.

00;10;57;25 – 00;11;09;10

MIKE
Thanks, Mike. Thank you. And thanks for joining us today. If you’ve enjoyed listening to Hog Talk, be sure to tell a friend or to and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcast. Thanks to the Insights Crew for their work on today’s show.

The following music was used for this media project:

Music: Funky Intro 29 by TaigaSoundProd

Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9520-funky-intro-29

License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Artist website: https://linktr.ee/taigasoundprod

© Ever.Ag 2023, confidential and proprietary.

Disclaimer: TRADING FUTURES AND OPTIONS ON FUTURES INVOLVES SIGNIFICANT RISK OF LOSS AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERYONE. THEREFORE, CAREFULLY CONSIDER WHETHER SUCH TRADING IS SUITABLE FOR YOU IN LIGHT OF YOUR FINANCIAL CONDITION. PAST RESULTS ARE NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THE INFORMATION AND COMMENTS CONTAINED HEREIN ARE PROVIDED BY EVER.AG AS GENERAL COMMENTARY OF MARKET CONDITIONS. THIS INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED AS TRADING ADVICE OR RECOMMENDATION WITHOUT FURTHER DISCUSSION WITH YOUR EVER.AG ADVISOR. THIS IS A MATTER OF SOLICITATION.

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