US Perspective - 26.03.19
26/03/2019
www.themaxfieldreport.com
Last week a couple of the packers still had representatives travelling in Asia and refrained from making their offers public, while other packers published offers that appeared unchanged with the past several weeks. Offers last week were dominated by heavyweight hides, while we even saw some initial offers of heifer hides; some of the packers appeared as if they were trying to position themselves for what should be a strong run of heifer hides in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the glaring issue with offers last week was that most of the selections offered appeared as if they could ship as early as April (next week), supporting arguments by pundits that most of the packers do not possess the sold-forward position that they have been advertising the past few weeks.
The number of bids most traders saw last week was disappointing. There are numerous reports accusing some packers of being much more aggressive last week, attempting to conclude some voluminous type business. There are also accusations that packers traded directly with tanners at levels several dollars under their official asking prices.
Reports from the cowhide trade suggest no noticeable change in the number of loads or types of selection offered. Asking prices last week also appeared as if they were unchanged. We are not aware of any claims of sellers seeing a substantial improvement in the number of bids; however, we heard from a number of sources that it appeared there was enough interest to justify producers’ attempts to keep prices as close to steady as possible on most business concluded.
Popular opinion of the trade is that producers will be hard-pressed to clear their production from last week.
It is very likely we could see more hides for sale this week and it will also be interesting to see if the shipping times on hides move out further than they were listed last week.
We would not be surprised to see packers try to align asking prices and selling prices. We will start to see more offers of heifer hides, as the April and May timeframe is notorious for an increase of heifers in the mix.
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