Hog prices closed moderately higher today with the prices settling at 90.675, which is up only .225. The market is technically overbought and we could see some corrective selling in the coming weeks, in my opinion. Pork production was finally up for the first time in nine months of 2022 by 5.9% (41.5 million tonnes). The Feb hog contract only saw two negative days so far this month and an increase in the futures prices of roughly $13. Fundamentally, based off of the cold storage report, the supply is poised to increase and looking to slow down the furious buying that the February contract has seen.
For the USDA Monthly Cold storage report, the frozen pork stocks came in at 537.9 million pounds which was up 14% from last year but down only slightly from last month (lower 0.1%). The CME Lean Hog Index as of October 20th was 94.05 which is up from 93.76 the previous session and 93.09 from the previous week. The estimated hog slaughter came in at 491,000 head yesterday which is unchanged from last week but up from 483,000 a year ago.