may be too high @ 70 for a spread order but since I leg into it, my strategy is based on the technical resistance for June cattle and a retracement support area for June hogs. June cattle will likely hit resistance before June hogs have their March washout retracement. So usually I have my short cattle leg on a month or two before the long hog leg is ripe for the picking. Getting this spread on near max range is an art form process based on the potential technical trading range for each market which can cause error in judgement and miss the trade all together. This is irrelevant to me because I put the short June cattle on first(which is usually good for a $10 drop on its own) I just treat it as a one sided trade until the buy area lines up for June hogs.

The first couple times I traded this spread I put it on too early and my $3 risk limit produced a donation from me, along with a great deal of frustration for trading spreads until I figured out I had to build my own system for the cattle hog spreads based on my trading strengths, along with a large dose of patience. I'm still tweaking how I trade the cattle/hog spreads, have never captured as much of the profits available from them, mostly due to lack of patience. I am making progress and have never been as excited about the potential available as I am now for the possibilities in the coming year.

It looks like my Dec cattle/hog spread may not get any lower than 77.00. I had the setup early making me think I might get my $3 today so I bot Dec cattle @ 169.35 expecting Dec hogs to stay above 92.00. Proven wrong on that thought but cattle did go high enough for me to scalp 75 cents which gives me a good 2.50 scalp profits from the cattle side since I put the spread on. I'm sure my lack of focus and effort towards scalping attempts on this spread have cost me another $2 in profits but sometimes a person can try too hard and shoot themselves in the foot.