came in firm at 213.58#. The year/year difference jumped all the way up to 10.27#. It was mostly packers hogs that were heavier. I have noticed for a couple of days that the packer-hog kill was weak and now they come to market with a bunch of heavy hogs. Next week we may see the non-packers cut loose a bunch of heavies.

I'm getting a feeling that packers may have been hit harder by the PED virus than the non-packers but I don't have solid data I can point to to back up this feeling.

The swine scheduled for delivery report shows that packers have about the same number of hogs lined-up that they had on this date last week but they are down by 170K on a year/year basis. That is 7.62%. Hog numbers are definitely down but are we now seeing some producers fall out of currency in their shipments?

If the USDA's estimate is correct, then I would project that producers have fallen out of currency by 288,000 hogs. It could take sustained firm demand to soak up that much pork at the current price level.

This I know - packers are a lot more on top of the supply of market-ready and near-market-ready hogs than I am. They also know if they have contracts with end users that they have to fill. The fact that packers were shipping fewer hogs last week and now the packer-killed hogs have jumped in weight suggests that packers withheld hogs to add poundage.

The dip we are seeing in the price of the QQQs today may be caused by some profit taking, weekend squaring up and technical/emotional factors.

If the QQQs start of next week again headed lower, I will be throwing a bunch of long QQQs over-board to keep my boat from being swamped.

Best wishes,

dhm