January 6

1/06 – In Dec’s Cattle on Feed report, the USDA said new placements onto feedlots in Nov were 4.9% above a year ago. That helped push the Dec 1st feedlot inventory to 12.03M head, 2.5% above last year. In Dec’s Livestock, Dairy & Poultry Outlook, the USDA reduced projected 2020 beef output to 1.4% above a year ago – and that meager increase will be more than offset by a 7.6% jump in exports and a 5.4% decline in imports. China has quickly become (by far) the world’s top beef buyer, importing a projected 5.0B lbs in 2019 vs 3.0B for the U.S and 1.9B for Japan. In Nov, Chinese beef imports were 78% above a year ago. Australian beef, once earmarked for the U.S., is now in scarce supply. As a result, domestic beef 90s trimmings are $2.42/lb vs $1.97 a year ago. Q1 2020 beef 90s look to average $2.40 vs $2.10 in 2019. Q1 beef 50s should average a nickel above last year.