DAILY CATTLE MARKET BRIEFING
November 7, 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. MARKET SENTIMENT: BEARISH SHORT TERM, SUPPORTIVE LONG TERM (4/10)
Momentum is clearly negative. TCR's Cattle Market Index fell another 1.64% Friday. It is down 13.56% from 10 days ago and 14.52% below its 60-day high. December live cattle futures fell for an eighth straight session through Thursday and touched their lowest level since early September. Cash trade is softer, boxed beef is drifting lower, and carcass weights are heavy. Risk-off sentiment in broader markets added to the pressure. The Dow dropped more than 1,800 points Thursday, and the dollar index is firming at 102.29.
The underlying supply picture has not changed. Cow slaughter is historically low, heifer retention is only modest, and feeder receipts are still below last year year-to-date. That keeps this looking like a sharp correction inside a tight-supply market rather than a trend reversal. The score reflects weak price action tempered by those supply fundamentals.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2. KEY PRICE TRENDS
Futures settlements (Friday, 11/6):
- December live cattle: 214.05 (-0.35). February: 217.20. April: 219.85.
- November feeders: 322.32 (-2.73). January: 318.37 (-1.95). March: 313.85.
- February lean hogs: 58.70 (-1.47). December lean hogs set a contract low of 54.225 on Thursday.
- December corn: 4.4150 (+0.0150).
Cash and cutout:
- Thursday's cash trade was about $7 lower on the week. South Central was mostly 218, Nebraska 214-216 (mostly 214), and Iowa about 216.
- Friday trade was limited. A few live bids came in at 210-212 in Nebraska and 215 in the South Central region, with dressed trade 5-8 lower at about 330. These were too thin to set a market test.
- Formula net price averaged 358.63 on 24,900 head.
- Choice cutout was 360.79 (-0.77) and Select 353.56 (+1.24). The Choice/Select spread narrowed to 7.23.
- Cutter cow cutout rose to 299.01 (+4.36), which suggests cow values are holding better than fed cattle.
- CME Feeder Index was 337.41 on Thursday, down about $44 from the June 26 record of 381.86.
Slaughter: Friday federal slaughter was 91,000 head, versus 98,573 a year ago. Week-to-date is 523,000 versus 562,146 a year ago, a drop of about 7%. Packers are working through fewer head, yet cash and cutout are still sliding. Reuters traders cite softer cash, lower cutout and heavier carcass weights as the pressure points.
Mexican feeders: Cattle crossing at Douglas and Santa Teresa sold $15-20 lower on the week in Tuesday's trade, with moderate demand. Those prices likely reflect several days of accumulated weakness. The same day, November feeder futures fell $3.90 and December live cattle fell $1.55.
Hogs: Hog futures are the weakest part of the complex. Average weights have risen to 293.5 lb, and pork demand is poor. USDA's October WASDE puts the 2026 barrow and gilt average at $63.79/cwt, down 7% from 2025.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
3. TOP 3 NEW DEVELOPMENTS
A. Eight-session futures slide and a $7 drop in cash.
Live cattle and feeder futures have given back a large part of the fall rally, and lower cash prices are working their way into feeder bids. Lower expected fed-cattle revenue gives feedlots reason to bid less for replacements. Futures are pricing in more weakness, which will likely carry into the sale barns next week. Watch whether Choice cutout holds near 360 and whether negotiated trade picks up. Confirmed negotiated volume was only 6,958 head Friday, versus 12,719 Thursday.
B. New World screwworm cases are accelerating.
APHIS confirmed cases rose to 113 as of Nov. 4, up from 71 a week earlier. That includes 111 domestic animals and 2 wildlife cases, with 55 domestic cases still active. November has already logged 24 domestic cases in four days, against 36 for all of October. New detections span Texas (including an elk and cattle in Starr County), New Mexico (cattle in Otero County) and Arizona. Arizona's first case, a ranch dog in Cochise County, was confirmed Oct. 28, and a 20 km infested zone with sterile fly releases is in place. Imports are currently flowing through Douglas, Santa Teresa and Columbus. Nogales is scheduled to reopen Nov. 30, conditional on animal-health conditions. Further detections could delay that and add movement restrictions and handling costs. The data do not show that imported cattle caused the U.S. cases.
C. Heifer retention is showing up, but only modestly.
Oklahoma State's Derrell Peel notes that beef cow culling has fallen from 13.19% in 2022 to a projected record low of 7.35% in 2026. Through three quarters, heifer slaughter is down more than 11% year over year, roughly twice the drop in steer slaughter. Heifers are averaging 37.8% of fed slaughter, versus a peak of 40.1% in late 2023. The January and July inventory reports showed replacement heifers up only 41.7k and 100k head, while at least 200k are needed just to maintain the herd. Herd growth in 2027 looks limited. Supporting data from USDA-AMS show October feeder receipts averaging 255,587 head per week, up 7.6% from last October. Year-to-date receipts are still 6.5% lower, and the heifer share of receipts was 40.2%, versus 41.6% last year. Weekly feeder and stocker marketings (week ending 10/24) ran 3.7% above the three-year average.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
OTHER ITEMS TO NOTE
Trade:
- Beef imports through September are up 18% (734 million lb) to just over 4.9 billion lb, led by Australia, Brazil and Mexico (+22%).
- Beef exports through September are down about 11% in volume by USDA-based figures. USMEF puts the decline at 6% by volume, with value steady
November 7, 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. MARKET SENTIMENT: BEARISH SHORT TERM, SUPPORTIVE LONG TERM (4/10)
Momentum is clearly negative. TCR's Cattle Market Index fell another 1.64% Friday. It is down 13.56% from 10 days ago and 14.52% below its 60-day high. December live cattle futures fell for an eighth straight session through Thursday and touched their lowest level since early September. Cash trade is softer, boxed beef is drifting lower, and carcass weights are heavy. Risk-off sentiment in broader markets added to the pressure. The Dow dropped more than 1,800 points Thursday, and the dollar index is firming at 102.29.
The underlying supply picture has not changed. Cow slaughter is historically low, heifer retention is only modest, and feeder receipts are still below last year year-to-date. That keeps this looking like a sharp correction inside a tight-supply market rather than a trend reversal. The score reflects weak price action tempered by those supply fundamentals.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
2. KEY PRICE TRENDS
Futures settlements (Friday, 11/6):
- December live cattle: 214.05 (-0.35). February: 217.20. April: 219.85.
- November feeders: 322.32 (-2.73). January: 318.37 (-1.95). March: 313.85.
- February lean hogs: 58.70 (-1.47). December lean hogs set a contract low of 54.225 on Thursday.
- December corn: 4.4150 (+0.0150).
Cash and cutout:
- Thursday's cash trade was about $7 lower on the week. South Central was mostly 218, Nebraska 214-216 (mostly 214), and Iowa about 216.
- Friday trade was limited. A few live bids came in at 210-212 in Nebraska and 215 in the South Central region, with dressed trade 5-8 lower at about 330. These were too thin to set a market test.
- Formula net price averaged 358.63 on 24,900 head.
- Choice cutout was 360.79 (-0.77) and Select 353.56 (+1.24). The Choice/Select spread narrowed to 7.23.
- Cutter cow cutout rose to 299.01 (+4.36), which suggests cow values are holding better than fed cattle.
- CME Feeder Index was 337.41 on Thursday, down about $44 from the June 26 record of 381.86.
Slaughter: Friday federal slaughter was 91,000 head, versus 98,573 a year ago. Week-to-date is 523,000 versus 562,146 a year ago, a drop of about 7%. Packers are working through fewer head, yet cash and cutout are still sliding. Reuters traders cite softer cash, lower cutout and heavier carcass weights as the pressure points.
Mexican feeders: Cattle crossing at Douglas and Santa Teresa sold $15-20 lower on the week in Tuesday's trade, with moderate demand. Those prices likely reflect several days of accumulated weakness. The same day, November feeder futures fell $3.90 and December live cattle fell $1.55.
Hogs: Hog futures are the weakest part of the complex. Average weights have risen to 293.5 lb, and pork demand is poor. USDA's October WASDE puts the 2026 barrow and gilt average at $63.79/cwt, down 7% from 2025.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
3. TOP 3 NEW DEVELOPMENTS
A. Eight-session futures slide and a $7 drop in cash.
Live cattle and feeder futures have given back a large part of the fall rally, and lower cash prices are working their way into feeder bids. Lower expected fed-cattle revenue gives feedlots reason to bid less for replacements. Futures are pricing in more weakness, which will likely carry into the sale barns next week. Watch whether Choice cutout holds near 360 and whether negotiated trade picks up. Confirmed negotiated volume was only 6,958 head Friday, versus 12,719 Thursday.
B. New World screwworm cases are accelerating.
APHIS confirmed cases rose to 113 as of Nov. 4, up from 71 a week earlier. That includes 111 domestic animals and 2 wildlife cases, with 55 domestic cases still active. November has already logged 24 domestic cases in four days, against 36 for all of October. New detections span Texas (including an elk and cattle in Starr County), New Mexico (cattle in Otero County) and Arizona. Arizona's first case, a ranch dog in Cochise County, was confirmed Oct. 28, and a 20 km infested zone with sterile fly releases is in place. Imports are currently flowing through Douglas, Santa Teresa and Columbus. Nogales is scheduled to reopen Nov. 30, conditional on animal-health conditions. Further detections could delay that and add movement restrictions and handling costs. The data do not show that imported cattle caused the U.S. cases.
C. Heifer retention is showing up, but only modestly.
Oklahoma State's Derrell Peel notes that beef cow culling has fallen from 13.19% in 2022 to a projected record low of 7.35% in 2026. Through three quarters, heifer slaughter is down more than 11% year over year, roughly twice the drop in steer slaughter. Heifers are averaging 37.8% of fed slaughter, versus a peak of 40.1% in late 2023. The January and July inventory reports showed replacement heifers up only 41.7k and 100k head, while at least 200k are needed just to maintain the herd. Herd growth in 2027 looks limited. Supporting data from USDA-AMS show October feeder receipts averaging 255,587 head per week, up 7.6% from last October. Year-to-date receipts are still 6.5% lower, and the heifer share of receipts was 40.2%, versus 41.6% last year. Weekly feeder and stocker marketings (week ending 10/24) ran 3.7% above the three-year average.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
OTHER ITEMS TO NOTE
Trade:
- Beef imports through September are up 18% (734 million lb) to just over 4.9 billion lb, led by Australia, Brazil and Mexico (+22%).
- Beef exports through September are down about 11% in volume by USDA-based figures. USMEF puts the decline at 6% by volume, with value steady
For more detailed information or specific market data, please contact your local extension office or market analyst.