Morning Ag Markets – Matt Hines
Date: April 26, 2024 Mixed day for livestock futures on Thursday with cattle triple digits higher and hogs triple digits lower. Not all, but most lean hog contracts gapped lower on the open from a bearish cold storage report and disappointing weekly export sales. Pork belly stocks surged higher last month and hams stocks only declined slightly. The 28,800 MT of net sales were down 32% from the week previous and down 25% from the 4 week average. It wasn’t that long ago that we averaged nearly twice that amount and exports were still friendly at 40K MT. Cattle futures did open lower but it wasn’t long before aggressive buying turned things around. Cash trade in the North helped spur the rally with $2 to…