Friday Futures Report | Tom Leffler

We’re in Nashville on a bare-bones setup, but the markets are anything but simple as nearly every major ag commodity closes down and sets up a weekend of headline risk. We walk through Tom Leffler’s slides to put the week’s damage in context, then zoom out to seasonals, cattle volatility, and what we’re watching next month. 
• weekly futures scoreboard across cattle, hogs, corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton 
• year-over-year context to judge whether prices are still historically strong 
• USDA monthly average cash prices and how basis changes what you actually receive 
• seasonal patterns for Kansas City wheat highs after January 1 
• seasonal timing for new-crop soybean highs and why early-year highs are unusual 
• seasonal timing for December corn highs and how to use it in a marketing plan 
• feeder cattle technical levels and why they matter right now 
• algorithms and managed money driving futures beyond cash signals 
• expanded daily limits in live cattle and feeder cattle plus the trade-offs 
• what we’re watching next month in managed money, soy crush, and cattle cash trade 
If you can come back in for lunch or in the evenings and watch these videos, they'll help out a lot.

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Futures and options trading involve risk and are not suited for everyone.

Futures Trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Past profits are not necessarily indicative of future results/profits. 

Transcript

Welcome And A Rough Market Day

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome back to Ag Bull Media. Jed Sidwell here. Tommy and I are both in Nashville for the week learning some cool new software to kind of improve the service that we give to you guys. So we're kind of running off of a rinky dink setup today, but uh we're trying our best. We have our Friday Futures Report with Mr. Tom Leffler. How are you doing today, Tom? Doing great today. Awesome. Well, I mean, we've had a crazy day, that's for sure, a down day across the board and all the ag commodities. It's rare. Normally wheat or hogs or someone uh comes in there at the last hour to show us some green uh and and to be the survivor, it seems like some days. But man, today's kind of been a bit of a brutal one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, I really wondered yet if one of our biggest problems was end-of-the-month type positioning and profit taking that really weighed on the market. And of course, we're gonna have another weekend of uncertainty out there in our markets, too, as it sounds like possibly President Trump did open up, lifted our barricade on the Strait of Hermoose. That could make things interesting this weekend when we come back Monday or Sunday night.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, Tommy and I were just talking about that. It's weird to go from a four-day week, the end of the month, to a week from now where we're gonna see possibly something pretty big over the weekend and then some interesting things on the weather forecasts. Yeah, I think it's good that we're having this show at the end of the week. I like it because it gets us set up going into the week here. Let's tear into our slides here. This is our first one. We kind of talked about in our last show how you're tied in with the Nezvik family here. If you didn't watch that one, go back and watch that because I think it helps explain things pretty well. Nice risk disclaimer that we always like to throw up as commodity brokers. Uh uh joke around, I should probably get the tattoo that uh past results are not indicative of future performance. I try and tell my girlfriend that she didn't find that near as funny.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Well, Jed, I tell people when I do meetings and they have to put that up on a PowerPoint presentation, they all need to stand up, put their hand across their heart, and recite it with me.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Like the FFA pledge or something.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

There we go. We have our first one here for you, Tom. The floor is yours, it's all you.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Well, Jed, this is something I do with all the commodities in my Friday newsletter showing where the markets close, how it compares to the week,

Weekly Moves Across Major Contracts

SPEAKER_01 2:51

and how it compares to a year ago. As we can see with our August live cattle, we lost 55 cents this week, but we're still $28.97 higher than a year ago. August feeders lost $1.42 this week, but we're $48.50 higher than a year ago. Our July hogs lost 90 cents for the week. We're $3.47 behind a year ago. Now, looking at the nearby grain contracts, July corn dropped 15 and a quarter cents this week, but we are unchanged with a year ago. July soybeans dropped 10 and a quarter cents this week, but we're $1.35 higher than what we were a year ago this time. In July cotton, they dropped $1.48 this week, but we're $11.20 ahead of a year ago. Now, when you look at the new crop prices out there, July Kansas City wheat lost 32 and a quarter cents, we're $1.18 above a year ago. December corn lost 11.5 cents, we're 34 cents better than a year ago. November beans, they gained two and a quarter cents, we're $1.53 better than a year ago. July Chicago wheat lost 35 and three-quarter cents, we're 77 cents better than a year ago. And December cotton, even though we've had a rough week here the last couple of weeks, I should say, we gained 18 cents this week, but we're 14.67 better than a year ago this time.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, uh, that cotton, it's hard to complain. I mean, yeah, it's been a rough one recently, but in the grand scheme of things, whoof, a lot better than we were a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, and we've came down a long way from the mid-May highs that we made, new contract highs, both in the old and new crop, but then we've been going down ever since then.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we get some kind of timely rains there and some things to kind of improve things for our wheat or our cotton country. Yeah, and corn. I heard someone say, yeah, it's not groundhog day, it's groundhog year. It's same year to year, and maybe we should overlay them. I don't wouldn't recommend that at all. But it is very odd that we're in the same spot we were. I don't think that happens.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

We know that July corn today had a 34-session low, and the new crop December corn, it had a 29-session low and got right down there on that 100-day moving average today. So we'll get down there to some areas we need to hold if we're gonna come out of the cellar.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah, I agree. We're you know, Carrie Artek, our charts guy, he talks about areas of resistance. And I hope that we're sitting on one because yeah, it would be nice to see a bit of an uptake there. Let's roll on to our next slide. If I can go ahead and make this one work, there we go. Tell us about this one, Tom.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Well, that's something I use for a lot of my meetings here in Kansas. And what this is, this is numbers that are put out by the USDA. There's national numbers

USDA Cash Price Averages And Basis

SPEAKER_01 5:33

and there's numbers for every state out there. But I wanted to show all my guys where we were last year with our average monthly price: the greens the soybeans, the red's the Kansas City wheat, and the blue's the corn market. And you can see each month where it's averaged out, and then you can see where it's averaged at the end of the year, such as the soybeans. Last year averaged 993 here in Kansas elevators. But I also wanted to show them where that compared to the last three previous years. And as you can see, we've been going down because in 2022 we're at $14.91, 23 was at $14, and in 24 we dropped to $10.80, and then last year $9.93. It gives a little bit of an idea where these prices are. They vary because of where your basis is, but you know, it's all using the same price levels based off the futures, just where you're at and what your basis is makes a difference of what that cash price looks like. But you also see we're in that time of the year where we start to go lower in these prices, and then if the summer gets to be a little bit iffy, we start to work our way back higher.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we we talked about going into the summer. There's opportunities to get in and set a price floor if you need, because we have things with weather and especially tweets and social media, see some spikes here or there. Uh and yeah, I think that those are good opportunities to get in and kind of utilize your risk tools to protect yourself throughout the summer because we see more of those this time of year.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yes, and looking at this for what happened last year, you can look there and see the price of wheat here in Kansas. Uh, we had opportunities this year to sell higher prices than what we had last year. But what happens sometimes? We get a little bit aggressive about more upside in the market, get a little bit greedy, and we sometimes don't take advantage of it. Now we've seen quite a pullback in our wheat price, even though we have a short crop.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Right. Right. Yeah, it's interesting. See you when you have a shortage and a price decline. Those two don't normally go hand in hand, but we have seen that in wheat.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Very disappointing.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah. Let's roll on to our next one here. It'll pop up. Okay, tell us about this one.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Well, this is something I've used for quite some time. It shows the July can city wheat highs that are made after January 1st of the calendar year. It shows the

When Kansas City Wheat Peaks

SPEAKER_01 7:55

last 15 years. And you can see we see 40% of the highs made in January and February. 53% of them come in the April, May time period, which we're just putting behind us right now. And we did see some of those highs this year made in this May time period. June and July, we hardly ever see highs made there. You can see 2012, there was a high made in July. More times than not, we're going downhill by the time we get there. January and February, we're seeing those highs mainly come in because we're trying to determine how much wheat got planted, what kind of winter we're going through. April and May is usually due to weather, whether or not we've got something that's hurting the crop or helping our crop.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, I think that's I had never seen it lined up like that in that format. And I think it provides a really interesting visual of just yeah, the percentages based on months. Yeah, uh, let's roll on to the next couple here, uh, because we got some more like that. If I can make the dang slides work, there we go. Okay. This one soybeans.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, it's like our November soybeans. You look there, January, February, March, and April, there's only been two years out of the last 15, 27

Soybean Highs Usually Come In Summer

SPEAKER_01 9:03

of the time, we actually saw a high made. 24 and 25 were exceptions. We made the high in 24 and we also made it in 25, they're at the first year, but late last year we had a late rally that made it move into November. But seeing those highs happening at the first year, very unusual. Most of the time we're seeing them in June, July, and August when the weather is either making or breaking that soybean crop. And as you can see, 53% of the time is when that comes. This kind of helps you make some decisions because sometimes when you're looking at markets that are going up, you know, in that first four months of the year for November beans, it's usually not a time that you need to be selling unless you have to. So wait a little while. Odds are you'll get a higher price.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, I mean, it's it's you got to find that perfect balance. You don't want to be greedy, you want to go ahead and be timely at the same time because yeah, you can wait too longer and you can not wait long enough. And I think, yeah, soybeans, like you say there, going into the summer, hopefully things get a little bit more positive. Let's roll on to the next one. This one is our December corn over the last 15 years.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

And you can see there, Jed, it's very similar to soybeans. Not a lot

Corn Highs And A Simple Seasonal Edge

SPEAKER_01 10:19

of highs are made first four months of the year. There, you saw the 2024, 2025 crop in January and February making highs. That's what we saw last year in the soybeans, other than that rally late in the year, made a November high for soybeans, but we usually don't see them at the beginning of the year. Our better times are made June and July, and even August works in there. And that's 67% of the time. Now, these don't work every year, but it gives you something to look at, something that makes you have an idea when do we see highs or when we don't see highs. Just one more thing to put in your marketing bag.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Yeah, another piece of evidence to kind of have in your game plan going into the summer. You don't may not have the the opportunity to use that play in your game plan, but it's nice to know that it's predictable to some degree and that it's there. Yeah, 67% of the time. That's that's that's significant enough to be aware of for sure. Let's roll on to our next slide. August feeder cattle monthly continuation.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Reason I'm showing that things have got a little bit weird here lately in our feeder cattle market. As you

Feeder Cattle Support Levels To Watch

SPEAKER_01 11:27

can see, our August feeders on a monthly basis, every one of these bars you see is a month. It goes all the way back to 2006. And our latest highs were made in the month of May of last year, of this year. I don't know why that says 25, it should say 26. But it shows if you look at the bottom of that bar, and it shows today's close was 348.42, just above 344 is the low for this month. And that is a critical area for this August soybean contract or August feeder cattle contract to hold together. We break through that, then we're gonna go down and start testing in that 330 area. And I've heard some people say that $300 area could be another place we hit, would still be a bull trend market, but I would have a lot of problems if we went down and hit that $300 mark. I really feel, Jed, a lot of what we're seeing going on right now in our cattle contracts as the futures is being driven by a lot of these algorithms and some of our managed money accounts out there moving the market more than what the cash is.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. We talked about it with Mike Sand Sands that uh spec net long that we've seen. People that haven't normally traded the cattle market are trading it because it's more liquid than it has been, and volatility attracts speculators, even though probably it shouldn't. Sometimes it does, and it's driving this market to do things that isn't the same cyclical nature we've been used to. It keeps you on your toes a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Well, Jan, it also goes back to what you was talking about earlier about tweets and comments being made, news headlines. Sometimes that trips those algorithms and just messes everything up out there, too. And keep in mind, last year when we had our highs made, they were helped by a record net long position by the managed money. We need to see more of that money flowing into the market. We just don't need to give the volatility from it.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. I I think, and I think the longer that we see more speculators, more managed money in the market, hopefully things, the turbulence starts to kind of mellow some there. Our next slide we have June 1st, resetting daily price limits for live cattle and feeders. Man, I'm part of a couple different text chains.

Bigger Daily Limits And Real Risk

SPEAKER_00 13:49

I've gotten some questions about it. I think it's at the top of everyone's mind going into next week.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Boy, I tell you, I think that uh it's one of the biggest things I heard about all week long from people. You know, this is ridiculous. You know, this is gonna cause volatility, it's just gonna drive us nuts. And I'm not gonna argue about that. It could cause more volatility, but you know, you go back and look, we have not had that many limit-up lock moves in our cattle complex in quite some time. And I can't even remember the last time when we had the expanded limits that get used to their full degree either. I'm not gonna argue that I disagree with the CME group raising these limits all the time. I'd like to see them back off, but I wanted to show people here. You see the limits going to $850 in live cattle, it's going to 1075 in the feeder cattle. But down below, it shows using monthly charts where the highs were in 2014, $245 in our feeder cattle. The daily limit back then was $3. From 2017 through most of 2021, the highs was $154. We had a daily limit of $450. And in 23, we had a high of $257.50. The limit got raised to $7. The following year, we had a high just a little bit higher, $265, limit got raised eight and a quarter. And the last two years, we've had a $381 high in last year, so far a $378.50 high this year, and our limits at $925. Of course, now it's going to go to 1075. It would be nice to see them back these off a little bit, but so far we haven't seen them push clump to those limits very much over the past few years.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah. And I get what they're seeing from the outside looking in. It's a proportional change, it's a percent swing. But at the same time, it's a large amount of money going up or down, either way. And it it makes it hard when we can only trade for so long compared to other markets on the cattle side, where it's a shorter window. So when things lock limit, the opportunities to get in and out when these things happen can be kind of scary. That's why we have these limits that are somewhat kind of probably more moderate. We the larger we make those, the harder it is to get out.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

It also brings up the question. I've heard this as long as I've been in the business. Maybe we don't need limits. Maybe we need to just eliminate limits, let the market flow tree uh freely. There's positives and there's negatives to that. But you know, I do think to some extent, having these limits are good. But also, sometimes I feel if we didn't have limits, maybe the market wouldn't, you know, shoot for that limit to try to lock into and allow you to get out of a position.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Yeah, it's almost like everyone takes out their expo marker once we see a big move and they're trying it on their screen. We're gonna hit here. And yeah, getting rid of that target, I think, would probably be kind of valuable. I hadn't thought of that before, but yeah, that's your spot on there, Tom. Let's roll ahead to our next slide. It'll pull up here. Oh, we went too far. We're missing one. No, I think I think we hit the end. Oh man. Time flies when you're having fun. Man, that was great. I think there's a lot of value in those slides there. Yeah, it will be interesting to see if we can play around with AI some. We kind of were doing it before the show, before you all get got to see the finished

Using AI Tools Without Getting Burned

SPEAKER_00 17:23

product. We were playing around some uh with the visuals that these things can create. Obviously, there's kind of some weird connotations right now with regards to AI and water usage and what that looks like for the ag world. But man, I'd rather know how it works if it's going to end up being something that negatively affects me rather than not learn how to use it.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

You know, Jed, you bring up a great point because it's something I make the comments about quite often. I try to explain to people my connections with Nesvik and Memphis and Nashville. And I tell them, you know, neither one of us owns any of the other company, but we have a working relationship. And I said the thing I really like about it is I get to be an older fart that I work with some younger guys that's got some ways of thinking differently. You showed me some of the things you've done with my PowerPoint presentation of AI, pretty neat looking. So, you know, there's an advantage of different ages working together on things.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, uh I wouldn't call you an old fart, Tom. I mean I I wouldn't say that at all. I'd say I'm more uh wet behind the ears still and don't know a damn thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

But Ken, let me put it to you this way. Just found out the other day we're gonna have our fifth great grandchild.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Well, that's a heck of an accomplishment. I'm just hoping I don't have my first child yet. So well, uh the show's been great. It's a lot of fun. I hope that we yeah, well, I think we're starting to do this on a bit more of a regular basis because I really like the the insight and and the visuals, especially. I'm a very visual learner, so having uh something to kind of paint the picture in my mind like that, I think for all of us brings a lot of benefits. So thank you, Tom. What are some things you're kind of kind of being paying paying attention to? We brought up some of them earlier uh as we go into this next month.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Well, I'm really looking for

What To Watch Next Month

SPEAKER_01 19:15

seeing a little change of heart by some of the managed money accounts out there. They start taking advantage of like the lows we've got in the wheat market, the lows we've got in the corn market, help those markets pull themselves back up. Soybeans have been hanging in there much better than anybody ever dreamed of. And I think we're getting a lot of help there because of the crush, because of the bean oil strength, and they continue to believe we're gonna sell beans to China. So all that helps out there. Our cattle market, I am very disappointed the way the futures have been acting because the cash had been much better than this until the futures started going down. And last I heard this afternoon, we had yet to confirm any real cash cattle trade taking place in our feed yards. The bids out there were at least two to three dollars lower than last week's average price on the hoof, which is around 260. So we're kind of watching for some upside take place there. When you get down to it fundamentally, nothing has changed out there in this cattle market other than maybe the displacement of some cattle because of the fires we saw earlier in the year in Nebraska, the fires we've seen in Kansas and Oklahoma. Some of those cattle are looking for pasture. They can't find any. It's already taken up, and those cattle are either going to cell barn or they're going to feed yard. So that's going to change the little bit of the movement out there. Bottom line is we don't have any more cattle today than we did two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Mike Sands and I had this conversation just on Tuesday. There's not, we're not creating any more cattle, they're just getting pushed around from place to place sooner than they normally would because that grass is getting a little crispy out there where they need some rains in some places, and we have gotten some pretty fortunate rains, but it doesn't make it grow back right away at this point. Some of it's just a little bit too late.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Well, Jed, I'd like to put a little plug in there for Mike Sands. He's a very good person to listen to. Mike has a wealth of knowledge about the cattle industry.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yeah. He he he does such a good job of just explaining things and breaking them down. I we talked off camera about it when we do the Fat Tuesday show. I have a hard time uh coming up with follow up questions for Mike because I'll write them down as we're going. He answers them and he answers them and he answers them. I think it's some of his teaching background kind of plays into effect and he answers a lot of the questions there.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

But I think yeah, he he's a real popular speaker that we have every year at an annual meeting. Everybody loves to hear what he's got to say. They have questions for him, and Mike has answers.

unknown 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yes, he does. And it's I think between the Fat Tuesday show and the Friday Futures Report, which we're calling Tom's show here, I think if you watch those two every week, man, I I'll maybe I'm patting myself on the back too much here, but I don't do any of the work, so not really. Think it's a really good way to stay informed and kind of uh just make sure you're in the loop. You know, I talk to my dad all the time back home. You know, he's in a tractor or in a sprayer or yeah, arming cows this time of year to try and get some bread. It's hard to stay just completely updated when you're out there in the field. But I think if you can come back in for lunch or in the evenings and watch these videos, they'll help out a lot. You bet. Well, sweet. Well, we'll wrap it up. It was great talking to you, Tom. Um, I'm excited to go uh back home and Illinois here for too long because Nashville's been fun. I'll talk to you hopefully in the coming weeks.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Sounds great, Jed. You have a great weekend.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

You as well, Tom.