Moderate volume follow through selling was seen in cattle today as more cash bids and trades came in today at steady levels with last week when futures had assumed earlier in the week that cash would trade at least $1 higher this week. This may have been the first week that truly saw cash slow down due to a slow down in slaughter. Yesterday’s slaughter report was one of the smallest seen in 2 years (not counting holiday weeks). That also continued a 6 week trend of slower slaughter reports. Up to this week that hasn’t appeared to have a direct affect on cash but this week it looks like it finally did with cash trading steady despite being a week with a showlist that was -12,600. For now a slowed slaughter suggests just what we saw this week which is potential for cash/futures to turn more sideways. A slowdown in slaughter is a slowdown in demand which this week was enough to offset the slowdown in supply (lower showlist). Slaughter is now something cattle traders and cash sellers will want to track just as closely as showlist and boxed beef numbers. On the technical side the June has a chart gap left at 157.925 which may be a down side target for sellers and a place new buyers may step in again. So far the setback in both fats and feeders would be labeled as small with feeders recently rallying $11 and fats just over $6 since the last correction.
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