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Early Morning Update - August 16, 2024

By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago

 

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NOTE: Class III, Cheese, Block and Dry Whey all have expanded limits today.

Big trends in markets tend to have days of capitulation. It’s a day when market participants throw up their hands, stop fighting their inner monologue  - that urge to wait-and-see, and they get busy making adjustments to their market positions. Or they give up on waiting and get busy getting the coverage they were looking for. That may be the best way we can describe yesterday’s surge in Class III trading activity.

After several quiet days in which the futures markets seemed to wholesale ignore spot market strength, futures/options participants got busy yesterday and how. Nearly 4,000 Class III changed hands yesterday and open interest increased by 701 lots. Cheese futures saw more ‘normal’ trading with 493 contracts changing hands with open interest rising by 115 contracts. New contracts highs are bullish. Spot market is bullish. But after such a strong week for prices – both spot and futures – the more apparent risk to us is a slowdown in buying. This is not a long term view of price action – just the dynamic apparent to us for today.

Barrel cheese gained 24.50 cents so far this week on a handful of trades with block cheese up 10 cents in sympathy. While we continue to hear of rather tight availability of fresh cheese generally that seems to be more focused on the barrel side of the equation. Fresh block cheese appears to have more availability for now and that may be a limiting factor for spot price action today.

Spot butter was also in the limelight yesterday with 51 loads traded as prices moved 2.5 cents higher. That is a record since CME Spot butter call migrated to the electronic platform in 2017. The early 2000’s saw a handful of days with more daily volume, but this is noteworthy for several reasons:

  1. the relative price stability suggests that although there is tremendous buy side interest today – that interest is met by willing sellers. The all time high price of butter was still set back in early June at 3.1625, so the market is absorbing the buy side interest quite well
  2. the second highest all time volume since spot butter moved to the electronic platform was August 16, 2023 – essentially exactly 1 year ago. The market at the time was ~50 cents lower and remained rather stable in the $2.60s before exploding higher starting at the end of September on a break-neck run to $3.50/lb.
  3. It’s worth noting that past performance is not indicative of future results. $2.60s this time last year was a rather new high at the time (remember spot butter had a high of $2.45 during the first six months of 2023). Also butter production this year has outperformed our expectations. At this time we view the burst of butter buying as interesting in light of similar action this time last year and presently that demand is well supplied by willing sellers

Nonfat continues to recover this week as it looks to test the 2024 highs set in late July. Prices moved a tick higher on a single trade with multiple bids and offers left unfilled. Futures volume was weaker was only 117 contracts trading as open interest was roughly unchanged due to some liquidation in nearby months. Global power powder prices are mostly steady after the Algerian tender announcement and now look to next week’s GDT for additional direction.

The spot milk basis in the upper Midwest moved higher again this week. Milk availability is tightening as Class I demand is increasing with schools coming back into session. Demand has not changed dramatically but the milk production situation remains very tight leading to a stretch in supply for Class demand.

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Slaughter of dairy cows in the U.S. remains weak week-to-week. Slaughter for the ending August 3rd was down 15.26% from last year’s levels. This brought the year-to-date slaughter total to a 14.47% decline from last year’s levels. The current share of dairy cows in the beef market is running well below last year’s levels but very close to last week’s levels. Total cattle slaughter was down 3.7% from last week’s levels in the 31st week of the year.

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  • Dairy

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