LE — Live Cattle

Livestock

Seasonality (Müller method)

Seasonal index per lookback window (5/10/15/20y), Jan 1 = 100. Hover for exact values on any date; drag to zoom, double-click to reset.

Methodology: for every pair of consecutive trading days, the per-calendar-day rate of change is computed and assigned to each calendar day the gap spans (e.g. a Friday→Monday move contributes to Saturday, Sunday and Monday alike). For each calendar day, the geometric mean of that rate across all years in the lookback window gives the average daily move; the seasonal index is the cumulative product of these averages walked forward from Jan 1 = 100. This is Philipp Müller's method, as published in the VTAD journal:
„Über die Konstruktion mathematisch korrekter Seasonal Charts und deren Analyse“ (VTAD, German)

Commercial COT Positioning

Report Date

2026-07-28

Commercial Net

-37,389

Net Change 1W

+11,536

Net Change 4W

+40,118

COT Index 26W

100

COT Index 156W

Last 10 years. Top: Commercial net position (long - short), CFTC Legacy Futures Only, historical + weekly combined. Bottom: Commercial COT Index, 26-week and 156-week stochastic (0-100); dotted lines mark the 20/80 bullish/bearish thresholds used on the main dashboard.

Forward Curve

Trade Date

2026-07-31

Structure

Backwardation

Trend

Strengthening

Spread

-4.50

Spread %

-1.94%

Near-Carry

-2.07%

Far-Carry

-3.67%

Curvature

+1.52%

Spread % over Time: front/next continuous-contract spread as % of the front settlement. Positive = Contango (next contract pricier), negative = Backwardation. Near/Far-Carry/Curvature: informational only, not folded into the Core Score - see tooltips on the stats above. Latest Curve Shape: settlement price across every available contract depth for the most recent trade date - the full term structure, not just front/next.

USDA Cattle Slaughter (Commercial, US)

Week Ending

2026-07-18

Weekly Slaughter

523,000

YoY Δ

-45,200 (-8.0%)

US commercial slaughter, all classes, in head (source: USDA NASS QuickStats). Toggle Weekly/Monthly/Annual above the chart — Weekly shows the last 3 years (federally-inspected survey), Monthly the last 10 years, Annual the full available history. YoY Δ above compares the latest week to the same calendar week one year earlier.