Commodities : Livestock, Meat Prices Fall to Daily Limit
Livestock and meat futures plummeted the limit allowed for daily trading Monday, driven lower by bearish fundamental factors and market worries over the continuing erosion of stock prices.
On other markets, some cotton futures also closed limit down; grains and soybeans swung lower; precious metals were mixed, and energy futures declined.
Even before the New York Stock Exchange opened, analysts were expecting cattle futures to trade lower on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange after the government on Friday reported a greater-than-expected number of beef cattle on feedlots.
“Then you came in with the weakness in the stock market on top of it,” said Tom O’Hare, an analyst in New York with Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. “That must have just sent them into a tizzy.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 156.83 points Monday. But while stock prices spiraled downward throughout the day, livestock and meat futures prices hit their lows early and stuck there.
“The Dow was just one more small factor that helped keep everybody in a very negative mood,” said Charles Richardson, an analyst in Denver with Lind-Waldock & Co.
Analysts said pork futures sank in sympathy with the cattle and on lower cash prices linked to large deliveries of hogs to slaughterhouses.
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