After a late-night passage of funding on Friday temporarily averted a government shutdown, we head into a quiet holiday trading week. Santa didn’t send many surprises Monday, with a lot of “unchanged” prices and very little volume hitting the spot trade as we awaited the afternoon’s Cold Storagereport. Last week, we got a few surprises with Milk Production, leaving analysts wondering if Cold Storage would bring the same. In futures, very little volume traded in Class III or Class IV as everyone is apparently baking their cookies and getting their milk for Santa.
Today’s Highlights
- CME spot markets got off to a slow start for this holiday week. Barrels and butter were the only movers, each down $0.0075 to $1.7525 and $2.5475 per pound, respectively. Nine lots of butter changed hands. Spot blocks, NDM and dry whey were all unchanged. Three loads of NDM and one of whey traded. There were no cheese trades.
- Futures were only slightly livelier. First quarter NDM futures bumped up to $1.4025 – a $0.0046 gain. Class III futures stepped lower. Q1 contracts settled at $19.62 per hundredweight, shedding seven cents.
- USDA’s November Cold Storage report leaned bullish for butter, with inventories totaling 214 million pounds. That was up just 0.4% versus 2023, shaving the year-to-year gap from +12% in October. Stocks declined 54 million pounds from October, ahead of the five-year average (-47 million pounds). Cheese was more neutral. Total cheese stocks reached 1.335 billion pounds, down 7.2% (-104 million pounds) on the year and -1.0% (-13 million pounds) month-over-month. That compares to the five-year-average monthly decline of 15 million pounds.
