Cattle futures retreat in a technical selloff
Chicago Mercantile Exchange feeder cattle futures hit the limit down and live cattle futures fell on Friday, as traders booked profits after both markets reached contract highs during the previous two sessions.
Resilient consumer demand for beef and a tight cattle supply have fueled recent gains in cattle futures. Retail buying ahead of Labor Day, a traditional grilling holiday, has also added a boost to futures.
October live cattle futures fell 6.25 cents to 225.975 cents per pound. September feeder futures lost 9.25 cents to end at 349.625 cents per pound. October hogs ended 0.25 cent lower at 90.675 cents per pound.
"There's no specific big news, we just got wildly overbought," Matthew Wiegand, broker at FuturesOne, said. "It's big volume in a once-in-a-lifetime market."
Meanwhile, a rally in wholesale beef prices has slowed, though meatpackers have continued to lower slaughter rates.
The choice boxed beef cutout declined by 10 cents to $378.84 per hundredweight (cwt), while the select cutout rose $1.34 to $355.09 per cwt, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data on Friday afternoon.
Packers are seeking to reduce losses as margins remain deep in the red, with the USDA's daily slaughter figures down sharply from the same time period a year ago.
Though producers are in the early stages of rebuilding their cattle herds after years of drought forced them to cull cattle, industry players are still awaiting concrete signs of the shift to reflect in USDA data. (Reporting by Heather Schlitz; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)
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