Good afternoon DH, and Thanks for your continued stats on hogs! Following is part of what I received awhile ago from my broker

Until butcher hog numbers drop off this market is not going to sustain a rally. The hog & pig, if it’s worth a salt, indicates that numbers will drop off to just 102% by the end of Feb. Phase one goes into effect Feb, 15th, Tyson pork is paylean-free as of today.

Finally, considering that monthly export data for Dec should be very friendly and consider the weekly export numbers a wild card…thinking in terms of what would the Chinese do….they need pork and last week U.S. pork was sharply discounted. They’ve already accelerated imports mainly from the EU and Brazil but they’ve also accelerated imports from the U.S., yet pork was severely discounted last week to levels not seen since Sep. Perhaps, just perhaps there will be a substantial purchase on the book made by China last week, say 125,000 MT or more accompanied with a new high shipment number over 20,000 MT. That might be the spark necessary to at least send prices back to pre-virus levels. Consider the following strategy.

• Buy April LH 68 calls at 200 points, liquidate on the close Thursday if they’re not profitable.