DAILY CATTLE MARKET BRIEFING
October 27, 2026
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1. MARKET SENTIMENT: BULLISH (7 out of 10)
Supply fundamentals are very bullish. September feedlot placements and marketings were the lowest for the month since the series began in 1996. Technicals have been bullish since mid-September. Three things cap the score:
- Packer margins slipped back into the red late last week.
- Boxed beef has been choppy.
- Substitute meat supplies look larger into 2027.
Cash trade was inactive Monday on light demand, and the market is waiting for packers to set the week's price.
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2. KEY PRICE TRENDS
Fed cattle (cash)
- Last Friday saw only light trade: $230 in Texas and Kansas, and $228-$228.50 in Nebraska.
- The 5-area weighted average was $227.06 live (up from $224.19 the prior week) and $360.79 dressed (up from $352.52).
- Both are still well below last year's $237.89 live.
- Monday had no new negotiated trade. Only 132 head were confirmed, versus 14,374 a year ago.
- Formula cattle priced Monday: 22,500 head at a net $365.02 dressed.
Live cattle futures (Monday settles)
- October: $229.97 (+0.10)
- December: $231.20 (+0.08)
- February: $234.50 (+1.15)
Feeder cattle
- Futures: October $349.90 (+1.58), November $348.55 (+0.43), January $346.00 (+0.65).
- The CME Feeder Index was 348.55 on Friday, up 3.46 and still well below the 6/26/26 record of 381.86.
- Weekly cash feeders are firm to higher week over week but 4-7% below last year.
- 500-600 lb steers: Oklahoma $430.65 (up from $402.29) and Nebraska $464.86.
- 700-800 lb steers: Nebraska $378.13 and Oklahoma $358.89.
- Feeder and stocker marketings for the week ending 10/10 ran 20.5% above the 3-year average, which is typical of peak fall run volumes.
Boxed beef
- Monday Choice was $369.44 (+3.65) and Select was $357.56 (+4.87).
- The Choice-Select spread narrowed to $11.88. It was $14.57 for the week of 10/23, down from $20.31.
- The weekly Choice average was $370.55, down from $374.70.
- Lean beef is under pressure from imports.
Packer margins and slaughter
- Reuters, citing HedgersEdge, reports packers lost an average of $4.10 per head Friday. That compares with a $32.15 profit Thursday and a $70.90 profit a week ago.
- Koontz at Colorado State describes margins as near breakeven in August and modestly profitable in September and October.
- Last week's slaughter was 546,000 head, 7,000 under the prior week and 27,000 under last year.
- Monday slaughter was 106,000 head, up from 105,000 a week ago and 103,883 a year ago.
- Carcass weights are 958 lbs, up 5 lbs on the week and 12 lbs above last year.
- September cattle slaughter was down 7% year over year, and beef production was down 6%.
Inputs and macro
- December corn is $4.55. Omaha cash corn was $4.40 last week, and DDGS are $203.75/ton versus $149.29 a year ago.
- December crude oil is $101.43.
- Equities were firm Monday: the Dow rose 149.81, the S&P 500 rose 53.24 and the Nasdaq rose 214.04.
- The U.S. Dollar Index is 101.97.
- TCR's Cattle Market Index was up 2.05% on the day, 6.49% over 10 days and 20.4% over 60 days.
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3. TOP 3 NEW DEVELOPMENTS
1) Cattle on Feed delivers a second straight bullish placement shock
- On-feed inventory on October 1 was 11.4 million head, about 100% of last year.
- September placements were 1.78 million head, down 12% and well below the trade estimate of about 92.6% of last year. This follows declines of 9% in August and 11% in July.
- September marketings were 1.52 million head, down 7%.
- September and October are normally the largest placement months, so fed supplies should stay constrained into early 2027.
- Koontz expects heavier weights to offset less than half of the drop in marketings.
- Inventories are down the most in Idaho, Iowa, Colorado and Texas. Texas has the largest decline in head.
- Packers have to buy this week's cattle against that backdrop. The shortfall in feeder supply is the main support for deferred futures.
2) USDA launches a new combined cash cattle report
- Starting with Monday's afternoon reports, USDA AMS added a regional report combining Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado negotiated cash trade.
- It uses existing data and requires nothing extra from packers.
- Negotiated trade fell from over 50% of transactions in 2005 to under 18% in 2025. That thinness has caused confidentiality gaps in reporting.
- The report is imperfect but should reduce reliance on rumor.
- Commentary from Nevil Speer argues volatility has stayed steady despite less cash trade. He also argues formula and negotiated prices track each other, so the new report improves information rather than fixing prices.
- R-CALF disagrees and favors more cash trade.
3) Replacement demand is strong, but cattle are scarce and feeders are under stress
- Heavy rain in Texas and Oklahoma on October 13-15 (3-8 inches in places) brought widespread drought relief. U.S. drought area fell 5.7% on the week and 14.5% on the month.
- Winter wheat is 76% planted and 53% emerged, with the planting pace well ahead of last week. This sets up what could be the largest winter grazing opportunity in decades.
- There may not be enough cattle to stock it. Mexican feeder imports are limited to an estimated 150,000-250,000 head in 2026 after the August 24 partial border reopening, versus about 1.25 million in 2024.
- Weaned versus unweaned calf spreads are widening, with a $50/cwt spread cited. Fall health problems and death loss are a concern for unweaned calves.
- Feedlots are carrying many empty pens, and a fully hedged feeding program currently locks in a loss of $200+/head. Capacity rationalization, including closures, is expected to continue through 2027.
- Heavy rain in the Southern Plains is a plus for grazing demand. Drought is worsening from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ALSO WATCHING
- New World screwworm: confirmed detections rose to 61 cases in the latest USDA update. Border and trade policy remain a risk to supply.
- Cold storage: beef stocks were down 1% on the month and the year, while pork was up 9% on the year and poultry down 5%.
- Trade and imports: U.S. beef imports are projected at about 6.26 billion lbs in 2026. China is minimal on exports because of the added 55% tariff.
- EID rule: R-CALF's lawsuit against USDA's mandatory electronic ID rule has a hearing scheduled for November 18 in Rapid City, SD.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
4. OUTLOOK
Near term (this week)
- Expect cash trade to resume once packers settle on bids. With the bullish COF report and low packer margins, cash will likely be steady to slightly higher than last week's $228-$230.
- Packers resisting higher bids with margins near zero is the main downside risk to cash.
- Boxed beef strength is the key variable. Choice around $370 and higher supports packer bids, and a drop below $365 would likely cap cash.
Technical picture
- Live and feeder futures have been in an uptrend since mid-September.
- That uptrend and resistance levels formed in early summer converge toward year-end. One of the two must break.
- Boxed beef will likely decide which way.
Into 2027
- Fed cattle supplies should be very tight in early 2027, which favors strong fed
October 27, 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. MARKET SENTIMENT: BULLISH (7 out of 10)
Supply fundamentals are very bullish. September feedlot placements and marketings were the lowest for the month since the series began in 1996. Technicals have been bullish since mid-September. Three things cap the score:
- Packer margins slipped back into the red late last week.
- Boxed beef has been choppy.
- Substitute meat supplies look larger into 2027.
Cash trade was inactive Monday on light demand, and the market is waiting for packers to set the week's price.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2. KEY PRICE TRENDS
Fed cattle (cash)
- Last Friday saw only light trade: $230 in Texas and Kansas, and $228-$228.50 in Nebraska.
- The 5-area weighted average was $227.06 live (up from $224.19 the prior week) and $360.79 dressed (up from $352.52).
- Both are still well below last year's $237.89 live.
- Monday had no new negotiated trade. Only 132 head were confirmed, versus 14,374 a year ago.
- Formula cattle priced Monday: 22,500 head at a net $365.02 dressed.
Live cattle futures (Monday settles)
- October: $229.97 (+0.10)
- December: $231.20 (+0.08)
- February: $234.50 (+1.15)
Feeder cattle
- Futures: October $349.90 (+1.58), November $348.55 (+0.43), January $346.00 (+0.65).
- The CME Feeder Index was 348.55 on Friday, up 3.46 and still well below the 6/26/26 record of 381.86.
- Weekly cash feeders are firm to higher week over week but 4-7% below last year.
- 500-600 lb steers: Oklahoma $430.65 (up from $402.29) and Nebraska $464.86.
- 700-800 lb steers: Nebraska $378.13 and Oklahoma $358.89.
- Feeder and stocker marketings for the week ending 10/10 ran 20.5% above the 3-year average, which is typical of peak fall run volumes.
Boxed beef
- Monday Choice was $369.44 (+3.65) and Select was $357.56 (+4.87).
- The Choice-Select spread narrowed to $11.88. It was $14.57 for the week of 10/23, down from $20.31.
- The weekly Choice average was $370.55, down from $374.70.
- Lean beef is under pressure from imports.
Packer margins and slaughter
- Reuters, citing HedgersEdge, reports packers lost an average of $4.10 per head Friday. That compares with a $32.15 profit Thursday and a $70.90 profit a week ago.
- Koontz at Colorado State describes margins as near breakeven in August and modestly profitable in September and October.
- Last week's slaughter was 546,000 head, 7,000 under the prior week and 27,000 under last year.
- Monday slaughter was 106,000 head, up from 105,000 a week ago and 103,883 a year ago.
- Carcass weights are 958 lbs, up 5 lbs on the week and 12 lbs above last year.
- September cattle slaughter was down 7% year over year, and beef production was down 6%.
Inputs and macro
- December corn is $4.55. Omaha cash corn was $4.40 last week, and DDGS are $203.75/ton versus $149.29 a year ago.
- December crude oil is $101.43.
- Equities were firm Monday: the Dow rose 149.81, the S&P 500 rose 53.24 and the Nasdaq rose 214.04.
- The U.S. Dollar Index is 101.97.
- TCR's Cattle Market Index was up 2.05% on the day, 6.49% over 10 days and 20.4% over 60 days.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
3. TOP 3 NEW DEVELOPMENTS
1) Cattle on Feed delivers a second straight bullish placement shock
- On-feed inventory on October 1 was 11.4 million head, about 100% of last year.
- September placements were 1.78 million head, down 12% and well below the trade estimate of about 92.6% of last year. This follows declines of 9% in August and 11% in July.
- September marketings were 1.52 million head, down 7%.
- September and October are normally the largest placement months, so fed supplies should stay constrained into early 2027.
- Koontz expects heavier weights to offset less than half of the drop in marketings.
- Inventories are down the most in Idaho, Iowa, Colorado and Texas. Texas has the largest decline in head.
- Packers have to buy this week's cattle against that backdrop. The shortfall in feeder supply is the main support for deferred futures.
2) USDA launches a new combined cash cattle report
- Starting with Monday's afternoon reports, USDA AMS added a regional report combining Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado negotiated cash trade.
- It uses existing data and requires nothing extra from packers.
- Negotiated trade fell from over 50% of transactions in 2005 to under 18% in 2025. That thinness has caused confidentiality gaps in reporting.
- The report is imperfect but should reduce reliance on rumor.
- Commentary from Nevil Speer argues volatility has stayed steady despite less cash trade. He also argues formula and negotiated prices track each other, so the new report improves information rather than fixing prices.
- R-CALF disagrees and favors more cash trade.
3) Replacement demand is strong, but cattle are scarce and feeders are under stress
- Heavy rain in Texas and Oklahoma on October 13-15 (3-8 inches in places) brought widespread drought relief. U.S. drought area fell 5.7% on the week and 14.5% on the month.
- Winter wheat is 76% planted and 53% emerged, with the planting pace well ahead of last week. This sets up what could be the largest winter grazing opportunity in decades.
- There may not be enough cattle to stock it. Mexican feeder imports are limited to an estimated 150,000-250,000 head in 2026 after the August 24 partial border reopening, versus about 1.25 million in 2024.
- Weaned versus unweaned calf spreads are widening, with a $50/cwt spread cited. Fall health problems and death loss are a concern for unweaned calves.
- Feedlots are carrying many empty pens, and a fully hedged feeding program currently locks in a loss of $200+/head. Capacity rationalization, including closures, is expected to continue through 2027.
- Heavy rain in the Southern Plains is a plus for grazing demand. Drought is worsening from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ALSO WATCHING
- New World screwworm: confirmed detections rose to 61 cases in the latest USDA update. Border and trade policy remain a risk to supply.
- Cold storage: beef stocks were down 1% on the month and the year, while pork was up 9% on the year and poultry down 5%.
- Trade and imports: U.S. beef imports are projected at about 6.26 billion lbs in 2026. China is minimal on exports because of the added 55% tariff.
- EID rule: R-CALF's lawsuit against USDA's mandatory electronic ID rule has a hearing scheduled for November 18 in Rapid City, SD.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
4. OUTLOOK
Near term (this week)
- Expect cash trade to resume once packers settle on bids. With the bullish COF report and low packer margins, cash will likely be steady to slightly higher than last week's $228-$230.
- Packers resisting higher bids with margins near zero is the main downside risk to cash.
- Boxed beef strength is the key variable. Choice around $370 and higher supports packer bids, and a drop below $365 would likely cap cash.
Technical picture
- Live and feeder futures have been in an uptrend since mid-September.
- That uptrend and resistance levels formed in early summer converge toward year-end. One of the two must break.
- Boxed beef will likely decide which way.
Into 2027
- Fed cattle supplies should be very tight in early 2027, which favors strong fed
For more detailed information or specific market data, please contact your local extension office or market analyst.