Commodity Chaos, AI Calm

All right, let's dig into the markets.

So for the week ending June 6th, and for the record, we're recording this on June 8th, The overall AeroStream Commodity Index was down last week and is lower year on year by about 8% due, thankfully, to lower poultry and dairy prices, which is offsetting some of the beef price inflation we've seen this year.

When we look at the grains markets, they have been down hard during the last week.

Even in the last month, just about everything's been down 4% to 5%.

The one outlier has been soybean oil, which is holding firm at historically high levels.

And dairy, milk output remains really strong with the milk cow herd the largest since 1993.

Cheese is down 10% in the last month.

The lowest we've seen in four months.

Butter's starting to rebound.

It's at seven-week highs.

And don't look now, but nonfat dry milk, which reached record highs earlier this spring, is starting to decline.

Chicken.

Wow.

I mean, we really have some strong output there that's causing some counter-seasonal moves in some of the market.

Year-to-day output is up near 3%.

We're seeing breast tenders and wings down for breast 15%, tenders 2% and wings down 6% in the last month.

In the case of breasts and tenders, that's definitely counter seasonal.

And wings are well south of a dollar, which is near decade lows.

Table legs also very low and inexpensive.

In pork, we're starting to see those markets seasonally firm.

But despite that, bellies or bacon is down 9% in the last month and likely a good buying opportunity, at least seasonally right now.

In beef, we continue to struggle with higher prices.

Year-to-date output's down roughly 6% thanks to a cattle herd slaughter decline of roughly 9%.

Markets generally over the last week and the last month have been flattish, but don't let that fool you.

Beef trim, so think of the primary ingredients going to hamburger patties, are at or achieve new record highs in the last month.