It hasn’t happened to the Eastern Young Cattle Indicator yet, but we have seen a few slaughter categories which have moved below year ago levels.
It’s been nearly two months of cattle prices tracking sideways, and just as the market seemed to avoid the usual autumn decline, the winter rally is taking its time to appear.
The Victorian Heavy Steer Indicator, which is a pretty good proxy for slaughter cattle on the east coast shows that there hasn’t been a week when the Vic Heavy Steer was lower than the previous year. In fact, we had to go back to February and March 2014 to find a time when the Vic Heavy Steer was lower than the year earlier.
Producers with heavy steers might be disappointed they didn’t sell a month ago, with the Vic Heavy Steer down 30¢ over that time.
