10-7-15 was up +0.46. That was a surprise and quite a bit above the range projected by the model. It's a real challenge to project which batch of hogs will be slaughter on any given day when packers have 14-days to bring the scheduled hogs in. Generally, though, the model does quite well projecting the component change.

The six-day moving average carcass weight moved up to 211.12#. That's -2.42# yr/yr. The kill is not living up to expectations this week and the carcass weights are climbing. I suppose it is possible that:

1. The USDA over-estimated on the inventory of market hogs or

2. Producers are falling out of currency in their shipments.

For right now I am going to stick with my feeling that history will play itself out and keep the index fairly firm until the VVVs expire. With the VVVs being discounted to the component by nearly a point, I'm sticking with long VVVs. Was able to pull off a scalp this morning but it has been mighty slow going for me today. I guess maybe I'm just too timid because the market movement has been there.

Best wishes,

dhm