Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Cattle Con Recap | Cattle Talk February 6th, 2026

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Cattle Con Recap | Cattle Talk February 6th, 2026 · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Cattle Talk Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your weekly breakdown of cattle market fundamentals, key news, and the insights shaping the industry.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Today is February 6th.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've got Jeff here with us today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: How's it going, Jeff?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's going great, Mike.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: You are fresh off Nashville Cowboy Country at CattleCon.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: You forgot your cowboy hat today.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was really disappointed.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you'd have one of those big foam ones from like football games.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you well, you can get some pretty impressive equipment down there.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's I think you can drop around$2,500 on a hat if you'd like to, Mike.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's more your budget, Jeff.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I did hear.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if I'm fresh either, but I am back from Catalcon.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is a heck of a show from the sounds of it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just like they're selling cowboy boots and hats and stuff, but they're grilling steaks out there too.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't know.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Compared to other events, it sounds like for an ag event, that one's really fun to attend, isn't it?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: It is, it is pretty fun, and there is a lot of people.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a lot of people in the thousands.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: There was ninety-four hundred or ninety-five hundred, I think, was the last uh count that I saw down there.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's a lot of people.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of people.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Downtown Nashville was this year, so um they do a really nice job down there too.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: They're set up to handle a lot of people, of course.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but Nashville's an awful time with a bunch of cowboys.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um what are a few of the main talking points and takeaways?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you even met the man RFK himself.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was pretty neat for me, I guess.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I I maybe haven't fouled uh his work as much as a lot of others have, shame on me, but and he did um they they're so once they heard that this was getting together and there was gonna be 9,000 cattlemen and women in uh in the same place at the same time, uh their RFK's folks reached out to the cattlemen, is what we've been told.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: So they he wanted to come and uh talk to that many cattlemen, and of course you can imagine what the topics were, right?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he won he talked about his upside-down pyramid a bunch, um, really pushed the idea that protein has gotta be the number one staple in these diets, right?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think a lot of us have known that for a while.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um but what really kind of impressed me, and I really I think this was intentional.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like he sent a message to the cattlemen that were in that room that hey, we need you folks to start rebuilding your herd.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Stop killing the mama cows and start breeding more of them.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're gonna need more beef down the road.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did he say how the government or they are going to try to influence that a little bit?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, certain certainly.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and and the market is uh sending some very strong signals today to build the cow herd.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's always difficult, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: You have to make the decision of am I gonna sell her for three thousand bucks or do I keep her and make some more calves out of her?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, even we were doing some LRP um strategizing down there um with some cow calf folks, and you can protect twenty nine hundred dollars of revenue on a wean calf for next fall.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: So even if you're spending spending six grand on the heifer, if you you could LRP her first calf for half that much.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty good Yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's the motivation is there.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's trying to instill some confidence in the industry of hey, we think this is gonna be a game changer as far as demand goes, and we're gonna need beef, and if you don't produce it for us, we're gonna import it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to import.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: That it was a very he said nobody in this administration wants to import beef.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: But as well.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: If we have to, we will.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's exact that's what my that's what my takeaway, that was reading between the lines a bit, but that was my takeaway.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Another main takeaway from him, it sure sounds like from the crew that attended there, uh, he seemed very well informed.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: I probably don't give them or politicians or some of those people enough credit with like I think they know a little bit about a lot of stuff.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like he really knew what was going on and knew talking points and was well informed on the cattle industry.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: He could talk about the different primal cuts.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: He understood how the increased carcass weights were helping offset the reduced inventory.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: He had a lot of that figured out.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: You can tell he's he's done his research.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's honestly pretty impressive.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Matt.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: That that should be noted anyways.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So any other talking points from Nashville?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the so the kind of along the same lines is um you know, Cattle Fax does uh a couple hour uh market review there on uh the Thursday morning this year, I believe.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and they do nice work.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: We really we we work with them, as you know, Mike, um at the shop here, we have a relationship with them, get their I always liked their charts and stuff back in the day before we made our own on Protect Power Rs, kick the crap out of them now.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I always liked those.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Shameless plug there in case you didn't pick that up, Cade.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and they I would I would even give them some credit for their the charts that they do today, Mike.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're they do throw a lot of good information at you.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um so and and this does align with our line of sight, so maybe that's why I grab onto it so aggressively, but they're pretty confident that we're starting to build um the cow herd.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're starting to keep some heifers back.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a few less heifers on feed.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're not really seeing any fewer heifers going to slaughter as a percentage um of the total kill or anything like that.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we did have the cow inventory report out uh last week.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're suggesting we're still going down a little bit on the cow herd as of Jan 1.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, we are starting to retain more heifers than what we did last year.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Cattle fax's numbers seem to be um at a little bit quicker rate than what that USDA reports.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they go off their own data set, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't go off do they use what the like inventory report told us last week?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna run some of each catch up.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: So yep, they're gonna use some of their own stuff, some of uh what they're gathering from the USDA and you know other market observations like the cattle on feed numbers, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, you know, it it really solidified in in our minds that we are turning the corner on this uh supply cycle.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: But definitely think um we're gonna start growing the number of cows that we have around.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um that obviously you as you well know, that's not gonna immediately put any supply on the market.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably actually gonna take a little bit off the market, probably is taking some supply off the market today, I would argue.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, as you look into 2027, um I didn't write the number down, so don't quote me, but I think they're thinking like 300,000, 400,000 more head to go to market in 27 than what 25 um and 26 even tighter this year up to the first half.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: So if the border opens, we'll probably they would say we would kill a few more cattle in 26 than what we did in 25.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because they think back half of the year in 26 it opens, and that's about a four percent supply bump.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's like one million one point two a year out of the twenty-four.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, nope, that's all spot on.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, and very much identify the same thing we were looking at here.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Short-term supply looks really short, really bullish.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the fact that we are killing, we talked about this a couple times, right?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I won't dwell on it, but you know, the value, the numbers that we're killing and still having to go up in cash, we're gonna be higher again in cash today, Mike, than last week.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Five bucks last week, probably two bucks this week.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: I bet yeah, it's gonna be pushing three the way it looks, uh, some of the stuff, especially stuff stuff that we're seeing happen in the south today.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they're pushing pretty hard.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: So two to three higher again, super low kills.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: We know what that story looks like.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um fairly optimistic here on the short run.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the other item that we've talked about and was discussed down there is the demand side, of course.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, we've been watching these demand metrics.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: We like we're looking at uh choice meat versus the production that we're putting on the uh out the back side of these packing plants.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're looking at the choice select spread.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: All that's starting to sh, you know, just I'm not saying it's a huge alarm bell or anything like that, but you know, there's a few chinks in the army there.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about that too.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um the true test will be here as we get closer to March and more seasonal time frame for that meat to be rallying.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know a big thing for RFK has been watching hamburgers specifically prices.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Did he mention anything about the primals with that specifically, like uh trying to specifically get hamburger prices down?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: I no, I did not hear anything.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm not saying it's space out for a minute or two, but I did not hear anything about prices.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I I think from that standpoint, I now if we want to fast forward a minute, just wait a day, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now Trump's back on the uh social media at noon today.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was the news today, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Saying that uh maybe Cade's got something on it, but Trump said that he was going to quadruple the imports from Argentina after all this.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we just got done speaking about how that administration doesn't want to import any beef if they don't have to, and then they yeah, right after that, they they said they're gonna quadruple.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Which that number's small anyways.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Argentina's not the biggest deal in the world, but uh yeah, it's to what I think with the you know the market adjusted oh good two and a half dollars, I would say.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um about noon today off that news.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was rocketing higher because of the you know, it was down yesterday.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: We can talk about that in a minute too.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Probably shouldn't have been.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it was it was scooting higher today, trying to catch up with the cash market.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: That came out and they smacked it pretty hard.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I'm thinking if the you know and the managed money is always gonna get nervous in these situations, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: But as I looked at that um today, it's like, well, I wonder if part of what they're worried about is does does he uh is that only the beginning of what he throws out there this weekend?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's the concern.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they this week, whether it was soybeans or whether it was uh soybean oil or or whatever the case was with commodities specifically, any news headlines revolving commodities this week got traded super hard.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And even just truff stuff involving Trump with commodities, those headlines got traded really, really hard this week.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So uh honestly, I thought it held in pretty decent after that news today.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're probably not wrong about that.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's get to the move that we had.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you want to wrap up your final thoughts.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I really want to talk about what we saw on the outside markets here over the past few days and how cattle reacted to it, Jeff.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so down at the show, you know, we we were largely blaming that on the possible strike with uh the Greeley Colorado JBS plant.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, often these big moves are probably combined on a couple different levels, of course.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: But and the personally, our shop, I would say we're we're not hugely concerned about that.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um we don't really need them that bad right now, um, as far as you know what we're killing versus uh the shackle speed.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Way more hooks than cattle at this point.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I can't imagine like they'll close that thing down for a month or two.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, JBS has probably like buying them their picket.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So right now, like, here you go, guys.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: You you need any help?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: You need any red tape, I I'll get you.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll feed you out there too if you want.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like we don't want to be open.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: I th I I don't know if that how that all works for sure, but I'm it's it's their timing is uh is doesn't seem to be perfect as far as the union side of things, but yeah, pretty much so.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: The outside markets, just whether it was the SP or gold, a lot of things got rocked through the middle part of this week.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: The SP traded way lower, the gold market traded way lower, it was risk-off, it was money flow out of a lot of things that's been going in.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, cattle was one of them.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: We've been on a huge tear, and cattle have been very tied tightly to the SP 500 and other equities as well on this run-up.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like any day you get a hard down day in the tech sector, Jeff, the cattle market tend to be trading with it as well.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now on the overnight, we rallied back really hard.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're up another 120 today on the SP is uh on Friday afternoon here.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: The cattle market responded immediately this morning higher with that after the overnight strength through the some of these other things.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I I truly believe that maybe the JBS thing wasn't that big of a deal on trade, at least, because we had rumors of that earlier in the week and it never got talked about.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I when I saw the reaction the last couple days, it just seems like the the cattle market and the SP are trading very closely with one another.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that outside market very strong influence these days, to say the least, Jeff.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I think there's even uh you know there's some I think there's a pretty close connection there, even if you want to just think about margin calls and such.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like when you get those markets moving very rapidly, people have to do some things that they would maybe even rather not.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of outside money into this cattle market today, as we all know.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: So it's I I do believe there's a connection there.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: If they if they're uh looking to create some capital for the day, you gotta start exiting some of these positions you're maybe not even bearish about, you know.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just take a win while you still got it.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Two, if you're taking a killing on another position, uh the likelihood of me adding risk is small.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And anything else.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um very interesting trading week.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on a on a long few months there, it was very boring in trade.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Volatility was low.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And even the cattle market last week, I believe, we talked about how cattle and corn had the same volatility level at 15%.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that pretty much settles that deal by the end of this week.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans were up change.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans were up 50 cents the other day, and corn was up like two cents, scratching it's you know what.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I I just corn didn't want to move, but cattle, sure, we got some volatility back in that thing.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: But the direction still is holding quite well.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uptrend alive and well.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: We got inside of the gap this week, which I wanted to talk about as well, too.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Feeder cattle 373.60, I believe, on the March high, something like that.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: That puts it right in the middle of that gap, Jeff.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very curious to see how we react up here, only a few bucks away from contract record highs.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh index, what are we at?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Live index.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Are we a record yet of a 376?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think we're quite quite not quite at a record there.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, we're pushing it.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you're pushing up against it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: The yeah, uh I agree on the charts.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it seems like at least you'd want to fill that gap.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why you wouldn't go put in a new high if we're this close.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know one thing, buying gets really hard when you're at record contract highs.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fair place.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Especially in this volatile environment.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: What other thoughts do you want to send our people home with going into the weekend?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of stuff moving around this week, so um yeah, it can be a stressful time for sure.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's also opportunities buried inside there.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: So want a visibility of that, give us a call.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, I appreciate you having me around here, Mike.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to bring up soybeans again here before the weekend.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: 1137 on March soybeans for a high today.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um had a low at 1102 through the session.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: We we went way, way up on the front months, front three, four months specifically, and then we brought it all the way back down to even.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: At one point today, March soybeans were like 20 some cents higher, and the November was actually trading red at that point.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that you could just you could see so clearly, Jeff, that the money flow was just all right, front three months of soybeans, let's go buy it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um the big money really moved around here this week.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So very exciting things to to kind of watch from a marketing perspective.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: The US dollar as well is something continue to keep an eye on.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're down on the US dollar again going into the weekend.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Last couple days we were higher, and we saw the SP and some risk off through that event.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh now heading into the weekend, we're seeing that turn lower again.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of big money flow.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Been exciting times, fantastic time at Nashville here this week.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Anything to look forward to on the cattle market here the next couple weeks for reports or anything.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: We got a WASD report Tuesday, but I know the proteins don't care so much about that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: No, they don't.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're yeah, we're a little ways away from any um reports on the livestock side.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll just be studying tweets.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for your time.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.