Low pork stocks support slight gain in hog prices - CME

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) cattle futures fell on Thursday on technical selling after live and feeder cattle futures hit contract highs in the previous day, reported Reuters. 

CME October live cattle futures fell 2.6 cents to settle at 236.925 cents per pound. September feeder cattle dropped 3.60 cent to settle at 361.80 cents per pound.

"We were heavily overbought and then we faded off and saw more weakness today," Matthew Wiegand, broker at FuturesOne, said.

A historically low supply of cattle, which has been further constrained by the closure of the US-Mexico border to feeder cattle imports due to the spread of screwworm fuelled a rally in cattle futures the previous week.

The choice boxed beef cutout value was up $2.57 at $414.41 per hundredweight, according to USDA data on Thursday afternoon. The select beef cutout was down $1.87 at $385.84 per hundredweight.

Pork inventories were also low, driving up futures prices.

CME October lean hogs rose 0.375 cent to settle at 94.275 cents per pound.