Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Comeback Story | Hog Talk February 27th, 2026

Transcript

Comeback Story | Hog Talk February 27th, 2026 · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Hog Market Talk Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your weekly deep dive into hog market fundamentals, breaking news, and industry insights.
• 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: All right, today is February 26th.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've got Jeff with us here today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk the hog market.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: What do you got today, Jeff?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you want to start?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: We want to talk about some of the recent action on these futures prices.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen a major correction lower here recently, and now all of a sudden she's trying to fight back a little bit towards some old highs, especially in those summer months, Jeff.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, doing a really good job of fighting back, honestly, Mike.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've been super impressed by this hog market here in the past week or so.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, usually you can get some uh some springtime doldrums in these livestock markets, and especially the hog market, right?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um usually you've got uh plenty of pigs still working through the packing plant.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're usually carrying plenty of weight.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Demand's not great, you know, in February, um, even into March.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you can that usually gets the futures market pretty disappointed for a while.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we had a decent break, um, probably about seven dollars, depending on eight dollars, depending on which uh contract month you want to look at there.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: That was really from the first week in February down to you know middle of February there, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um if Cade wants to bring up the chart here, um I just thought maybe that break would last a little bit longer, just kind of based on what we've seen historically on on this type of uh spring hog market.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we had really rallied since November up until the first of February, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: So big uh big rally, uh bit of a setback.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of found that 50-day moving average, um, as you can see on the screen here.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there was also some consolidation there to the left, kind of right in that first of January type of time frame.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um it just found some really good support there and been incredibly strong, in my opinion, uh, in in the past, I don't know what is that, seven, eight trading days.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, back to almost the highs in the summer months here.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um you go back a little further and you start looking at like October and December.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: They both put in some new contract highs yesterday.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um so you know, the other thing that we've been watching a little bit is the managed money position, and we'll get another report on that tomorrow, right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um last week's, which is getting a little bit of age on it now, probably.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, it showed us at 117,000 roughly.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't been shy to hold a position in that in that uh commodity for a while now, but really all proteins, right?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: They've been pretty friendly, holding pretty big managed money positions and in both cattle, feeder cattle, lean hogs.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's been pretty friendly here.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell I think that's a chunk of the reason why we were able to we weren't we didn't set back any further and were able to recover quite uh rapidly, you know, is those guys just they weren't really interested in letting uh much of their position go.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now the the supply side seems simple because not much is changing, right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Weights are pretty high, but the numbers have been pretty similar.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no major weather disruptions if they've happened.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's been on the weekends.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: So really supply's not the story, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we haven't expanded, so maybe that's the story uh if there is one.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is the part of the story, Mike, is you know, usually we've been uh seeing some really good hog markets here since uh last October or October of 2024, if I get my years right.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, you're going on a year and a half of what we'd consider really incredible hog markets.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Usually we are starting to expand by now.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think even short term here, one of the more bullish things that is out there, and if you want to start looking at fundamentals and and maybe some reasons why um this market is as strong as it is, that's the first one that floats to the top in my mind.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I'm not saying it's a huge change or anything, but you know, Packers are pretty interested in owning some pigs.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So shackles space uh you know versus the hog supply seems to be pretty tight, uh meaning that Packers are looking for pigs.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's cash markets pretty hot.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, it looks like we're gonna be working on a little bit shorter supply situation than maybe what we anticipated.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And doesn't seem to be really changing like we're making money uh, but maybe not enough to really expand at at this point uh with inflation the way it looks either.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the story really to talk about is the demand side.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think going into pretty critical time of the year soon, spring and then summer?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh are we still on track?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Are we hoping for nice appreciation into those months on the cutout going forward?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seemed resilient around these mid-90s for quite some time now.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh are we gonna get disappointed if it doesn't go into the hundreds here soon, you know, low hundreds?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what when do they get disappointed about that?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it'll be before it'll be before uh mid-April, before mid before April expiration.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because we're April's sitting at today,$96 and some change.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you're gonna have to have like a 104-ish type cutout to make that work, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: To get the index there.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that is they'll they'll start getting real disappointed here.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's probably a few weeks yet before anybody cares too much, based on how many people seem like they want to put some money on the long side of this market.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, at some point, if April's gotta come back down to you know low nineties or ninety bucks because that's all the cutout will let the index do for now, um, that'll get the this the that'll correct all the other futures markets as well.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like April is one of those months that it really is a big swing month.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it can either rip your head off or you could be really right on it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: It can be a really tough one, I think, to trade.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: It it it really goes either direction um from here, no doubt about it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: What other uh comments do you got this week on the hog market?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you know, you hit on it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: We were we wanna we're gonna be watching product values, that's gonna be an important one as we move forward.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, other than that, I you briefly mentioned the um managed money position.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: One of the telltale signs of that is how they're pushing on those way back months.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um so obviously, you know, when managed money is putting money into these markets, it's usually an okay time to be looking at some hedge activity.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: So we are pushing our positions out into those fall and winter months.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're looking at some pretty decent opportunities, not saying it won't trade higher, um, but prices are good today.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: That they are.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for your time today.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it, Jeff.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thank you for running the show here, Cade.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll see you next week on the Hog Market Talk podcast.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Mike.