the hog traders yesterday?

Only 5795 contracts were traded!

The 170-day average is 38,365 so it was just 15% of an average day and 41% of the previous low of 14,111.

With packers raising about one third of the hogs, I doubt that we will see a repeat of the December 1998 fiasco but it is possible. Already the CME Index is down 50% from the high of 134.17 printed on 7/16/14. That's quite a hair-cut. Currently the index is at 62% of where it was one-year ago. Last year the average index during December was 83.42. If that same percentage holds for the rest of the year, the average index during December will be 51.72.

That is quite a drop from the 67.325 where the ZZZs settled yesterday.

I'm not projecting, you understand, just playing with the numbers but my inclination is to trade hogs the short side. Like you say, if China comes back into the market in a big way, their billions of people can gobble up a lot of pork and they now own Smithfield.

Best wishes,

dhm.