
CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary

- Dairy
By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago

You’ve got to feed a bull market. That’s the saying. And with spot cheese largely stable so far this week following last week’s quick rally, buy side enthusiasm cooled Wednesday. Spot block cheese did push 1.5 cents higher on one trade to a new 2024 high price yesterday, but that bullishness was mucked by an unfilled offer left on the board and the price of barrel cheese falling a penny on one trade.
The fundamental reasons for the north of $2.00 cheese price (namely less cheddar production, improved demand this summer, tighter milk supplies, etc.) remain intact. But buyers appear quieter this week (both at the exchange and anecdotally in the country) and that ought to be noted. While supply side data remains bullish, demand gets a vote.
Its too early to say that we’ve entered into some sort of lower demand period. Frankly, we don’t think so. But we’ve seen spot cheese bobble around over the past couple of weeks and that kind of market dynamic appears to still be in play now. Futures markets have been quite active this week with open interest rising on up and down moves. Large (and small) speculators are long Class III and Cheese and, it would appear, continue to trade the market from the long side of things. Producer selling is not as heavy as you might expect with really excellent Q4 farm margins on the table, but producers have been active this week.
Big bull markets tend to get all the attention and the daily volumes in Class III (and to a lesser extent cheese) seem to illustrate that. Nearby Class III and Cheese are poised to start lower today on follow-thru from yesterday’s weaker close. The market appears to be bracing for some spot weakness. We shall see.
Headline milk production in July was down 0.4%, but after adjusting for components and milk going into a bottle the amount of solids available to process in July is estimated up 1.1% from last year. Given the tightness in cheese I’m assuming cheese production improved from -1.4% YoY in June to +0.9% in July. With cheese taking more milk, there is less left for butter with butter production in July forecast up 1.5% YoY compared to +2.8% in June. Combined NFDM+SMP production is forecast down 14.7%, similar to the 15.5% drop in June. High protein WPC/WPI production was likely still strong with solids shifted out of dry whey and low protein WPC.

Spot butter has been trading slightly weaker since making a new 2024 high last week. Prices were do just a ½ cent yesterday on no trades but futures was able to see strong volumes with 545 contracts trading as open interest rose by 223 contracts. The strong volume was primarily due to a Jan-Jun futures pack trading 50x/month @ 289, a new high for the futures pack as 2025 have traded slightly higher over the last week. As spot butter has been somewhat range bound and in essence, making new highs while doing so, creates more appetite to buy deferred futures as we continue to battle milk production expectations for the rest of the year.
Spot nonfat continues to see little resistance trading 1.25 cents higher yesterday on 2 trades to 1.355, again a new 2024 high. Futures volumes has been steady this week, trading 191 contracts yesterday as open interest rose by over half (98 contracts). Even with spot pushing higher, futures have consolidated recently near the highs last week as prices were mixed to lower yesterday into 2025. Although US fundamentals look bullish and recent export data showed stronger exports to Mexico, the market likely needed to take a breather after a roughly 10 cents rally in futures in 3-4 weeks.
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Daily CME spot dairy market price summary


August 7 – The U.S. economy unexpectedly lost 23k jobs in July, dramatically below market expectations of an 80k increase and marking the worst Non-Farm Payrolls print since February. Furthermore, May and June were both revised sharply downward, with combined revisions showing 103k fewer jobs than previously reported. Outside of the healthcare sector, which added 22k jobs in July, the losses were very broad-based. Government payrolls saw the largest decline, shedding 53k jobs in July, the largest seen since October 2025, while June was revised down to show a loss of 10k jobs as well. The private sector at least saw growth, adding 30k jobs in July, now matching the month prior after it was revised down from the 49k initially reported, and substantially missing forecasts of 78k jobs being added. This is a sharp reversal in course from the largely better than expected U.S. labor data seen earlier this week.


Daily CME spot dairy market price summary

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