AG Squawk with Brian Splitt | In-Depth Market Analysis and a Marine’s Lessons in Staying Calm

A 6-minute breath hold sounds like Hollywood fiction until a Marine water survival instructor explains the real formula: control movement, slow the heart, and keep your mind out of the panic zone. We start with the Midwest heat dome and the long-weekend vibe, then Brian Splitt from Agmarket.net brings us inside Marine Corps water survival qualification, what “panic” really means, and why calm is a trained skill, not a personality trait.

From there, we pivot hard into market analysis you can use. We break down silver’s technical structure after a major run, where support is showing up, and why the dollar index often moves as the mirror image of metals. Then we move through the grain complex with a producer’s eye: corn reacting to weather and repeating chart behavior into the holiday, soybeans sitting on a clear shelf with the 200-day moving average in play, and wheat trying to build a base while harvest pressure lingers and report data offers a bit more support.

Energy and livestock close the loop. We talk crude oil levels that matter on the long-term chart, why pump prices do not drop instantly when crude sells off, and what that lag means for costs and margins. Then we hit cattle, feeders, and hogs with straightforward technical signals, cash-market gravity, and the kind of “what would have to break” road map that helps you manage risk instead of guessing.

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Transcript

Heat Dome, Holiday Mood, And Costs

SPEAKER_00 0:04

It's still pretty steamy out there in the Midwest, but we're almost through what forecasters have reportedly warned is dangerous heat. As crop country meanders toward the exit of the heat dome, the expectation for cooler temperatures may have put a bit of a chill in the markets today. From behind the big blue audacious microphone of Ag Bull Media, nestled in the Ultimate Man Cave in Kansas City, USA, I am the handsome newsman, your pal, Davis Michaels, and so glad that you're here with us today. July 2nd, it's Thursday, but we've got those Friday vibes definitely going ahead of the of the long weekend to celebrate our nation's birth. The 250th birthday of these beloved United States or our nation's, I learned a new word today, semi-quincentennial. Semi-quincentennial. I hope you take the opportunity to appreciate this great nation and uh all the freedoms we enjoy thanks to the best military in the known universe, which has so bravely defended it. Before I bring in my guest, let's just take one second, talk about those Independence Day celebrations. This, according to the National Retail Federation, 87% of survey respondents plan to celebrate Independence Day this year. An American Farm Bureau Federation 2026 Summer Cookout Cost Survey found a classic Independence Day cookout for 10 people will cost $73.82 or about $7.38 per person. That's an increase of $2.90 or 4% from last year. AFBF said their findings are basically in line with inflation figures. And with that, let me bring in my guest, Brian Split from Agmarket.net. Brian Split. So great to have you here in our first week of podcasting for Ag Bull on the AgSquawk

Marine Water Survival Training Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Podcast, brother. Uh, it's been a long time since we spoke. I've been looking forward to this day for a long time. How are you doing, man?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

I'm doing good, Davis. Yeah, it's it's cool to be part of the uh the program here in the inaugural week and have you as the uh the captain at the helm. So congrats on that and look forward to seeing where the conversation goes, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Well, thanks very much. I appreciate it. Now, a couple of months ago, you and I were speaking on a different program. Actually, you were talking to a friend of mine, and I I guess I I wanted to have you on on this day, especially just because of your military service. You were in the United States Marine Corps, and as I understand it, it came out in this conversation a few months ago that I'm referencing that you were involved in dive instruction. Is it correct that you were a dive instructor for the Marine Corps?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

No, not dive instructor, a marine combat instructor of water survival, and there's they're separate distinctions. Okay. So a dive instructor is the verbiage for when you are using scuba gear, have a scuba tank, that would be a dive instructor. A water survival instructor is the verbiage for a various levels of water survival testing, which would start at the basic level when you go to boot camp and there's a week of what they call swim qual. The most basic level of swim qual is hey, can you swim from that end of the pool to that end of the pool? And are you comfortable enough in the water to use your camouflage blouse to inflate it with air while it's wet because it'll hold air and just float? And if you can do that, then you pass the basics. Then it goes all the way up to what we would call water survival qualified, where you have to demonstrate the ability to jump off of a 15-foot tower before you break the surface. You are simulating that there is oil on fire on the surface of the water, as could be when you abandon ship. So you have to clear the surface by using your hands to splash water in all directions. And then as you are egressing from the area, you are continuing to splash water in a 15-foot radius around you to uh continue to move the flames away from you. So that's something you have to simulate. You have to do a half hour of treading water. And these Marine Corps orders for all of the different trainings do evolve over the years. So I don't know what the training looks exactly like today. But think about maybe videos you've seen where there's a candidate underwater, they're having their mask pulled off of their head, they're having their scuba line tied in a knot, they have to stay calm, they have to do what they need to do to clear their mask, get their breathing back in order. That would be the scuba course. And then the scuba instructor is the one that runs that course. Now, through the the course that I did, I also taught a course called Combat Water Safety Swimmer, which is basically a military lifeguard. But everything that you have to do as an American Red Cross certified lifeguard, you have to be able to do in full combat gear. So that was a course that we ran. And if anybody's looking for a book to read on any of this, actually, a friend of mine that went through the combat water safety swimmer course, he was in the first reconnaissance battalion. And so he wrote a book called One Bullet Away. His name is Nathaniel Fick. And so his book basically starts where he is going through, he graduated from Dartmouth and went through the officer candidate school, became a Marine officer, goes through multiple deployments. And part of there's a chapter in that book that goes where he went through my combat water safety swimmer course. We later rendezvoused with his unit in Iraq. We saw each other very briefly as we were just kind of crossing paths. And interestingly, there was another book that was called Generation Kill, which turned into a HBO mini-series. And that was that was a a journalist that followed, it was a Rolling Stone journalist that followed that unit that I had trained previously in the combat water safety swimmer. So the whole platoon came. And this journalist then wrote this book. And there was a Marine in that unit, his name is Rudy Reyes. He eventually was in the actual series on HBO. And Rudy is now one of the chief instructors on the show Special Forces, which takes some reality stars and they put them through special forces training. And then you, you know, you have to go through the whole gambit over several weeks, and there's a very high attrition rate. So Rudy is one of the four chief instructors on that show, which I can't remember what channel it's on, but we always watch it with the kids because my wife's always like, Dad trained him.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Isn't that cool? Oh, that that is cool. Well, and and of course, thank you for your service. We really appreciate it. It's funny that you would mention celebrities and such, because I did have a question for you. I don't know how deep you got into uh holding one's breath underwater.

Breath Holds, Panic, And Staying Calm

SPEAKER_00 6:55

But I was watching uh Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise, Rogue Nation. Yeah, and and the scene is I think there's a submarine that's that's underwater, and he's got to go down there and get the documents or the microfilm, whatever it is. Apparently, when they filmed that, he did literal breath holds of six to six and a half minutes, according to IMDB. Brian, that sounds insanely difficult to do. Is that even possible?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, you can hold your breath actually for a lot longer than that with the right training. We used to do just things where we would take a 45-pound plate and we would hold it at the bottom of the pool. Part of holding your breath is minimizing movement. So the more you move, the more blood is circulating, the more oxygen your body's using. So if you think about it at the most basic level, when you go through hypothermia when you're in the water, your body can enter what you call the mammalian dive reflex. And so that's basically where your body is shutting down all non-essential activity. And it wants to just save all of its energy for basically staying alive, right? Your heart, your brain, your lungs. So think about that, but you know, modify that a little bit to where you're just trying to conserve oxygen, you're trying to not have to breathe for as long as you can. So if you can minimize movement, then your heart rate slows, and that's going to prolong your ability to hold your breath.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Huh. And I would imagine there's a pretty hefty mental component too that you you kind of just got to keep yourself calm and maybe even keep repeating to yourself, hey, this is this is there's oxygen at the at the surface anytime that I need it, or the mental component has got to be a big part of it as well, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Correct. Yeah. One of the basic things we had to do in our water survival course was a 50-meter underwater swim. So you're f swimming 50 meters underwater without coming up, right? And the ones that try to do the swim quickly and they're swimming hard because they think they're going to get there faster are the ones that come up first. The ones that do one stroke and then glide as long as they can until they stop moving and then do one more stroke and then glide as long as they can. Those are the ones that make it the furthest distance.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

And is it we're gonna get off this?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Uh okay, eventually.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I'm fascinated by this because I can hold my breath about 30 seconds and I and I start to panic, and I and I'm pretty sure I begin to turn blue. Is it a gradation thing? You see, you start small and just you can hold it a little longer and a little longer and a little longer over time.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

It's that like anything training your body. It's just like going to the gym, right? When you lift weights, your body gets used to it. Then you lift a little bit heavier, your body gets used to it. Maybe you do some more reps, your body gets used to more reps, gets used to heavier weight. So it's just that same activity. You're you're gonna obviously want to have uh quite a bit of cardiovascular fitness, and you know, going on runs or are doing some type of cardiovascular activity will help your volume. But yes, there's a big, big mental component to it. And you know, part of that is staying calm because what happens when you start to panic to your heart, Davis?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Well, mine goes faster, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:57

And that's what we're trying to avoid. So again, a big part of that is staying calm mentally, not getting into that panic zone. I still remember. So one of the funny things about going through this course is they give you an actual test, right? That you have to take the test and you fill it all out, but you have to remember certain definitions verbatim. And if you like put an uh or a the, then it's not correct, like that answer is not right. So the the definition of panic that we had to remember was a sudden and unreasoning and overwhelming terror that destroys destroys a person's capacity for self-help.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Wow. That's a pretty good definition. It is, and you still remember it.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I do, I do, verbatim.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Remember that until your very last sunset.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Well, very good. Like I said, I've been wanting to have this conversation with you for the good folks of of agriculture for months. Thanks for walking me through that, man. That's that's that's that's what I came for. I also came for on behalf of my friend Ted Hamer. In fact, let's send him out a shout out. Ted Hamer was on the show yesterday, and he he wanted me to kind of to

Silver Support Levels And Big Targets

SPEAKER_00 11:10

mention silver to you and just bounce the silver market off of you and and see what you think sticks to the wall here. We're well off the mid-May highs, little pop this morning. Can you take us into silver to get us started in the markets?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, I think right now, you know, we had a major move in silver, and I think we have a chart that we can pull up here to uh give us a little bit of a backdrop. But the if you think back about a year ago, the silver market started to see some buying interest, and we saw some minor buying and kind of a test of the previous record high that was scored in 2011. Uh, we saw that occur come fall, and there was a little bit of consolidation in fall. And then as we got through November and into December, the market went really parabolic to the upside. And so since then, we had that first major drop, then we had a recovery, and we've been in this downward trending channel ever since that that uh March peak, that secondary peak. And so the way it looks to me is we're kind of revisiting the scene of the crime, if you will, where we really broke out and accelerated last fall. That's where this kind of the low end of this channel resides. And although we didn't maybe get all the way down to the low end of the channel to the bottom of it, we are starting to see some support at those fall highs. So I think we're we're looking for maybe one of two things here. If we can't get through that downtrend short term, we may very well revisit the low end of the channel one more time. Maybe we need to go back and look at the old high of 49.50. However, if there is, we are at the beginning of a quarter, and if if this correction in in metal values looks like an opportunity to make a run at it again, we are at some very good big picture support levels where we could easily move from kind of lower end of the channel back to upper end of the channel, which depending on timing and and velocity of the rally, could be back into the maybe the low to mid 80s down the road.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

We were a little softer in the dollar today, at least for a little bit. I haven't looked lately, but uh is is there a relationship between metals, in particular silver and the dollar?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, and you know, the the metals have that inflationary component to it where you know gold is often just as simply explained to some as a hedge against inflation. And I know there's it's it's more than just that, but you know, silver has the inflation component to it as a precious metal, it has an industrial component to it also. And when we think about the dollar index, we have seen a little bit of pressure here short term, but really the dollar made a major low back in January, and that low was on the 28th, and and the dollar has been rallying since then. And when we look at the metals and when did the the silver market top, it topped on January 29th. So you had a major shift, right? Silver tops the day after the gold market or the the dollar market bottoms. Seems like there's a pretty good correlation there.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Absolutely, for sure. All right, well, let's bring it into farm country. Corn futures firmed a few cents at the open of trade this morning. Export sales of corn exceeded the average trade guest at 1.5 million metric tons. By lunchtime, corn futures had faded

Corn Weather Risk And Chart Parallels

SPEAKER_00 14:36

to either side of fractionally unchanged. Before we get to the closes, I got to mention plus five, plus five hundred software. I'm using plus five hundred T4 software to keep track of futures and options pricing up to the minute, real time quotes.com can help you get involved with plus 500. But uh Brian, by the end of the day, I've got September corn down a half cent, 422 and a quarter. Deast corn off one and one quarter cent to four forty and three quarters. I'll ask you for the final word here, but a couple of factors that stuck out to me a cooler forecast coming up once we get over the hump here with the heat. And also, bro, I don't know if you're gonna be in the office tomorrow, but nobody that I work with is gonna be around to pick up the phone. Maybe, maybe traders leaving early this week.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, I mean, weekend starts early. We've got a forecast that uh is hot short term, and maybe there's gonna be some additional heat as we get later into the month, but it does seem to be accommodated by precipitation as well. And I can't get over how much today's bar is almost exactly like last Friday going into the weekend. So last Friday we have an opening price of 443. We make a high of 446 and a quarter, then we settle at 441 and a half. And you need to check your plus 500 because they're giving you the last trade, not the settlement price on that. We actually settled at 441 and a half, which is down three quarters. So today's bar we opened at 443, same as last Friday. We had a high of 446. Last Friday's high was 446 and a quarter, and then today we settle at 441 and a half. Now that snapshot was taken before the close, so it has it at 42 and a quarter. That's just where it was at that time of the day. But we settled at the same price we finished, so we finished the week unchanged from last week. We went through the report, but now today's bar and last Friday's bar have the exact same look, same opening price, same settlement price. And so I think we're set up for, you know, if this weather story does not look supportive coming out of the weekend, uh, the long holiday weekend, we very likely will do what we did coming out of the last weekend, which is have that sharp break, especially when we, you know, if we trigger a move back below 440 to start on Sunday night. Now, interestingly, we rallied right into the weekend a year ago, right up to about 442 on the DS-25 contract for different reasons. Last year was because Trump was going to Iowa and everybody was like, oh, Trump's gonna say something about ag. And it didn't, and we ended up gapping lower coming out of the weekend. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what what we do out of this this holiday weekend. But we're definitely kind of primed at short term. There's a little downward trending channel. We got to that trend line. We're at the upper end of this little downward trending channel that we've been in for the last, I don't know, three-ish weeks. And uh the low end of the channel is gonna be right back down there around 430. So uh I think we could easy, easily lose you know, a quick 10 cents early next week if weather does not provide uh an impetus for this market to try and break through 450.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

All right, very good. Let's move on to soybeans. Futures were higher at this morning's open alongside strength in both soy meal and soy oil. Export sales of soybeans during the report week came in below the bottom end of expectations

Soybean Range Floors And Fund Risk

SPEAKER_00 17:49

at a meager 224,000 metric tons, as was the case in corn. Soybeans faded through the midday hours all told. I've got the NOVE down a cent and a half at 1147 and three quarters. What'd you make of the beaners today, Brian?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

You know, it's been pretty consistent. We've we're in a trading range and there's there's very definitive shelf below us. When we look at the low that was made in the month of June, it was 1121 and three-quarters. That was mid-month on the 15th. We had a low on the report at 21 and three-quarters. I'm sorry, 25 and three-quarters. Sorry, 24 and three-quarters. Get your numbers right, Brian. So very good support there. But this actually kind of extends back to in mid-March. If you look back to March, we had that initial peak when the war started, and then we had the bean market had that quick break, and we made some lows in in mid-March. So now you've got some mid-March lows and you've got some mid-June lows at very close to the same price. And then you've got the 200-day moving average stuck right there as well. That's that white moving average. So if this market cannot break through the short-term downtrend, which is in orange, which was right at today's high and right at yesterday's high, and also right at a 38% retracement of the break from the May high to June low, if we can't get through 1160 in a meaningful way, we're probably going back down to the low end of the range coming out of the weekend. If we end up succumbing to pressure, and I'll say this is maybe kind of anecdotal, Davis, but it kind of seems to me over the years, as grain markets make their seasonal highs, the corn market and the bean market often top around the same time. But then the the corn market seems to be the one that has that big move down first. So think like beginning of June this year, right? Corn is just in a free fall, and beans are under pressure, but they're kind of more chopping lower. They're not in free fall mode. And then kind of as it evolves, if we stay in kind of that bear market sentiment in the month of July, then corn is the one that starts to chop a little bit lower because it's already made the bulk of its move. And the bean one, the bean market is the one that starts to really take over to the downside. We still have the fund length in the market in soybeans that we don't have in corn. So I think the bean market is the next shoe to drop if we stay bearish coming out of the 4th of July. And if we find the other side of 1120, break down below these March and June lows and take out the 200 day, I think that's a big signal that the fund manager is going to liquidate length and potentially maybe build a short-term short position.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

In in wake of the reports, we made a big deal out of the reports on Monday and Tuesday now. It sort of feels like all of that information has now been digested and has flushed its way through the system on corn and soybeans. Fair?

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yeah, I don't know that there was enough in the report to really change anybody's mind about anything. You know, so on corn, yeah, stocks were less than the trade was thinking or looking for, but they're still 652 million bushels higher than a year ago. And you know, the trade was looking for some corn acres to come down a little bit from March, and they actually went up 5,000. So, you know, it just shows that the the spike in in fuel and uh fertilizer didn't you know put any pressure on on planting intentions, and so the the market now moving forward really is is gonna be weather, you know, as we get into pollination. And and for soybeans, uh frankly, I'm kind of surprised beans have held in as well as they have here short term because the acres, and yes, we thought the acres would be up, but they were. So you confirmed that the bean acres went up from March to June, and it was one of the higher percentage increases, I think, from March to June in quite some time. And then the stocks were actually bigger than expected on soybeans as well. So uh I didn't really see anything positive out of the bean report specifically, but maybe there was just kind of that, you know, it's gonna be hot short term, and we just don't want to be a seller right now. But yeah, but sub 1120 on Nove Beans, I think you've got a problem.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

All right. Well, Winter Weed Futures completed the hat trick of higher opens with Chicago up around a nickel KC weed, a few cents higher to start the day. Weed export sales lagged last week's tally and came in at

Wheat Support And Producer Price Zones

SPEAKER_00 21:57

about 300,000 metric tons, right at the bottom end of. Expectations. By the time lunch was over, Chicago wheat was fractionally lower. KC wheat hanging on to two cent gains at the close. I've got Chicago wheat on the September down a quarter of a cent, 599 and three quarters, just below six bucks. And then there's your KC three and a half higher, 638 and a half, Brian.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah, so KC wheat recently, and this was you know testing supports into and on the report. We're revisiting these April lows that were scored. And this is a very good level for us to try and catch short term. So the question right now is all right, we seem to have held that longer term uptrend. We we closed below it one day and then right back above it the next day. So maybe just a little bit of a short-term bear trap. Now we're closing above that downtrend from the highs. We've got to close above it today. And actually, today's low was right at that uptrend uh from above. So I would like to think that maybe out of all three commodities, corn, soybeans, and wheat, what had the most supportive data on the report, I think was wheat. Stocks were a little less than expected. You know, the acreage scenario is definitely friendly. Uh, however, we do have this period of year where there's typically going to be harvest pressure uh in general. So what I'm hopeful of, and and is maybe if we can continue to hold that 615-ish lower end of the range, maybe we can bounce back up to to revisit the the upper end of that that range, maybe that 665 to 675 area. You do have a couple outlier peaks that are in the 670s when you look back at March and late March, uh, maybe even in early part of April before we saw that sell it ex saw it accelerate through there. But predominantly the the upper end of the range was maybe the you know 665-ish area. So that lines up with the 38% retracement of the break from the highs. So if I'm a producer and and I've got some wheat that uh has not been priced yet that I need to make sure is priced short term, you know, maybe that's the area that you're you're hoping for, is maybe a continued bounce up to we had a mid-June high at 664 and a half. A revisit that area looks like a real nice spot short term.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Okay, very good. Let me hop over to crude oil quick before we hit the livestock. Pretty quiet day in the WTI, hovering just below 70 bucks a barrel. I gotta point this out, Brian. There was a moment when former

Crude Oil, Gas Prices, And Time Lags

SPEAKER_00 24:22

President Biden leaned into a microphone. I remember it specifically because I was a little bit critical, uh leaned into a microphone and said to fuel retailers lower your gas prices now. And I was critical of that because there's so much that goes into making it a bucket of gasoline that you can't just just paste whatever price you want on it. You've you know it's it's not not quite that simple. Well, it does seem that President Trump has done the same thing now in urging retailers to lower their prices. He'd like to see 250 gasoline for for this weekend. It'd be a nice tidy number on our uh wait, what was that word again? Be a nice tidy number on the uh semi-quincentennial.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Semi-quincentennial, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Quincentennial of our nation, but I it's not that simple, bro. Talk to us about crude oil.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

No, I mean, so the problem with crude oil as it relates to the product is it takes time, right? So crude oil is the raw material, and then it has to get processed, and then it gets processed into your unleaded gasoline and your diesel, right? So that's your RBOB and your heating oil on the board of trade. And so just because the price of crude oil comes down and has come down in in future does not mean that the product price comes down simultaneously. There's you still have to work through the higher price crude oil that still has to be processed. Then the processed product is going to be priced according to the input. It's not going to be priced according to where crude oil is trading today. So there's a time lapse that needs to occur. And so it's, you know, unfortunately, it's almost the opposite of how things work in the ag world, where, you know, the the end product, the corn, right, comes down, and then now we're hoping fertilizer comes down with it to make it make sense again. Where in the energy world, the input, the crude oil will come down first, and then the product side starts to lag afterwards. So we need to see crude oil stay low for a little bit longer before the products really come down. Now, what I will tell you is to me, this looks like an area where crude oil probably should try to catch short term. And I just say that because when we had the invasion of Ukraine and the bull market that crude oil embarked upon at that point, when we came off of the highs and finally said, okay, we're stabilizing. Well, it was in this general area. We had some lows in March of 23, around 64, then we had it again in May of 23, and then we bounced, and then we came back down in December of 23, and this was around 68 at that point, and then we had some lows in September all the way through December of 24, and those were around 67. So, you know, what you'd probably draw your eye to is that white line that goes across starting in about 2021, and it goes across all of those lows, and it wasn't until April of 25, which what happened in April of 25, well, that was Freedom Day, right? We announced these tariffs, then crude oil broke below that shelf, and then we started to find a new base around 55. Well, then the war starts. We gap over the downtrend, which by the way, we filled that gap today on the monthly chart, the monthly continuous. So having filled the gap, having kind of come back down to what ended up being a pretty good base of support for about two years on crude oil after we saw the Ukraine invasion. I think this is maybe an area where the the crude oil is going to start to be used a little bit quicker to help maybe bring down the the price, right? So we're trying to average in our crude oil input to uh be able to bring down our average product price a little bit sooner.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. I've I just googled uh today's triple A national average gasoline price as of $72.26, $3.83 and a little and a little bit more. So uh we're we're a little ways to go yet to get to $250 a gallon nationally. Over to the cattle's cattle complex was under pressure at the start of day.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Maybe if Trump's president for our 350th, he'll be good, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Well, and maybe if he says it more, maybe that'll help. I don't know.

Cattle Trend Breaks And Cash Reality

SPEAKER_01 28:44

All right, cattle. Yes, cattle, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

The cattle complex under pressure at the start of trade. Pressure continued through midday on both feeders and fat supped feeders down 370, 358, 47 and a half, and October fat cattle down 242 and a half, two thirty four and thirty, except violating that 360 level there, Brian. How worried are you?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Well, I I don't like kind of the the start to the week. It doesn't look real good, but if we look at this weekly continuous, long-term upward trending channel going all the way back to the inception of the bull market from COVID. And we just made highs kind of at the upper end of the channel. So there definitely does give us some room to work our way back down to the low end of that channel, which over the next couple months maybe comes in in the upper two teens to low 220s. Now, the thing that maybe gives me a little bit of pause is the first week of July a year ago, which if you look back, it's in a little ellipse, a little white ellipse. That was a negative week for cattle last year as well, the first week of July. And then the next week, they just started buying it and then it ran itself higher into the latter part of August. So technically, I don't like that we took out the uptrend from from last fall. I don't like that we had this big reversal lower this week. When we look specifically at the August live cattle contract, and we don't have that to show, but I'll paint you a picture. We had lows that were made in November of a year ago, then we had the low that was made in early June of this year when that the screw worm news came out, and we kind of gapped lower to start the week out of the weekend, and then we finished the day higher. Well, that uptrend is right where we stopped on today's lows. So they bought the uptrend in in August live cattle. If we end up breaking through there, and and to me, it doesn't take a genius to realize that if we end up breaking down below those early June lows that were made on that screw room news, that's a really bad development on the chart. So I do have some concern because we are failing at the upper end of the channel, and I do have some concern because of how the uh the week behaved, and it's really not that much different in the feeders. We're we are up against strong resistance. We've been making highs up against 380 going back to last fall, and we had some highs, uh, you know, 78 and some change as we have gotten into April, May, and June of this year. If we see the other side of about 335 on a front month basis for a feeder cattle, that is going to lead to some additional liquidation and selling. So it's kind of like where it's giving you like that that your spidey sense is tingling, where it's like, oh, this kind of doesn't look good or feel good. But we haven't broken through on the chart yet to say, yeah, this is trouble.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Well, and it does feel like maybe there's a little cushion in there from the cash side.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah, and and that's you know what we saw happen. You know, we get the the June contract expire and and it goes off, makes a new high into expiration. But maybe, you know, what the market is telling us right now is that it sees something that either the cash market's not going to stay strong, or we're gonna do what we've been doing, which is we overdo it on the futures, the cash doesn't follow, and then we have that race right back to where, oh my gosh, you know, August is trading 15 bucks under cash or 20 bucks under cash, and then all of a sudden futures just take off. So that's been the pattern, that's been the way it's been behaving. I hope that's how it continues, where sometimes you get an event, maybe something causes the fund manager to want to lighten their position, maybe there's a washout in the equity market and that weighs on cattle, but then it still always comes back to okay, well, now we got to tie ourselves back to cash, and then we get that move. One of these days, the futures are gonna be right, and the cash will come down. We just haven't had that be the case yet.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

The cash market never lies, Brian. That's what I've always been told. Futures will tell you lies all day long, but cash market. Well, very good. Hogs uh lean hogs waffled around unchanged to start the day session. By noon, lean hogs were moderately higher. August contract up a buck seventy to ninety-eight seventy-five, but let's look out to the Dees Hogs

Hogs, Spreads, Weather, And Signoff

SPEAKER_00 33:10

down seven and one half cents on the day to 73.37 and a half, Brian.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, I think the the hog market's got some short-term upside potential. The August contract really completed a major head and shoulder top. Uh, we've got a drawn there, your left shoulder, your right shoulder, the neckline is clear as day. It was not the easiest one to trade because you know, we broke through the neckline, and then after doing that, we we actually gapped back over it and then jumped back down through the neckline and then jumped back over it and hit the downtrend one more time before ultimately seeing a large break that that we would have been looking for. But the objective was wet. We went down and revisited the lows from fall of last year. And so the way that the market kind of came off of that 102 area, it started a little bit of a downward trending channel, and then as it got a little bit deeper into the channel, it kind of accelerated out of it and made that low. I think we're gonna do the opposite. We've got a little bit of an upward trending channel right now. I think at some point we're gonna accelerate through the upper end of it, make our way back up towards 102, back towards that downtrend. But ultimately, I think that's gonna be a major selling opportunity for for the uh the the hog market.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

What's the story on this spread here? I don't know if anybody watches the August D spread in the lean hogs, but I mean let's just take the rough figures. 98 in the in the August and 73 in the dece. Is there any information in in that little factoid?

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Let me look at it. That's not something uh I was coming out of left field.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

I this is why we need you to come and help us out with this. But it, I mean, it's a $25 spread from from August to D's, and it seems like there's there's gotta be some kind of message there.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Dece Dece is usually uh quite a bit cheaper than summer month hogs anyway. Off the top of my head, I can't say, Oh, well, I don't trade a lot of hogs, Davis. So, like if you you know, if you were to ask me like, oh, the price of corn this year, I'd be like, Yeah, is this? I can't tell you like where hogs were at any given moment. But when I look at the chart of the spread itself, it looks like a a small version of the August chart that we just looked at. There was a head and shoulder top. We went down and revisited the fall lows, yeah, November low. And now we're kind of working ourselves back up towards that high from yeah. So it looks like August probably sees a little bit more strength relative to the December contract, maybe up to like 26, 26 and a half, maybe another dollar. I think you're gonna run in some trouble there. And if I saw 20 26 dollar premium to D, so I'd maybe be looking at that to to narrow a little bit as as time goes by.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Okay. Very good. Very good. You got stuff to do after this, or is this this about it for you today?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Well, no, you know, I'm gonna actually just sit at my desk all day and think about the market the rest of the day. I don't want to start my weekend at all. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Well, after the clinic that you just put on for us, Brian, I would believe you if you told me that's what that's what you had to do.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

No, I'm gonna I'm gonna get in my car and I'm gonna race home. And and I think uh little my little guy, my 12-year-old, he was actually in Dyersville with me last weekend. We were at the Field of Dreams tournament. Sure. And so they did really well. They made it to the game that if we won, we would have played in the championship game. So definitely exceeded our expectations for the team. So we were really happy with them. But uh anyhow, we need he wants to go to the carnival today, so I got to get home so I can drive him and his buddies over there and they can screw around for the next seven hours.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Yeah, man, that sounds perfect. Well, let's get into the weather quick, and then I've got some items of mild interest for you, and then I'm gonna loose you can get to it. National Weather Service has been preaching it all week, Brian Dangerous, record-breaking heat to continue across most of the central and eastern U.S. through Friday, then focusing on the eastern U.S. through the Independence Day weekend, peak heat indices of up to 115 degrees possible. Strong to severe thunderstorms will be possible from the northern plains into the Midwest and Great Lakes regions as well as across the southern Appalachians today. And now, Brian split items of mild interest. This I'm sure that you already knew. July 2nd, this day in 1776, the Continental Congress voted to adopt a resolution severing ties with Great Britain. That was the actual vote for independence. The formal wording of the Declaration of Independence was finalized and approved two days later on July 4. This day in history, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were last heard from over the Central Pacific, transmitting a position reported at approximately 8 43 a.m. Neither they nor the aircraft have ever been found. And finally, Richard Petty, 1937, born this day, July 2nd, American NASCAR driver known as the King, winner of 200 NASCAR Cup Series races, seven-day Tona 500 titles. A quote from Mr. Petty quote, the good lord doesn't tell you what his plan is, so all you can do is get up in the morning and see what happens next. Happy birthday today, Richard Petty, the King. Uh Brian Split, thank you so much from Agmarket.net for being on the show today. We had a good long chat. I I appreciate how thorough you were and how willing you were to talk about holding holding your breath and stuff at the beginning of the show. It may come in handy for me one day.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Yeah, if you ever need some help, you know, some swim lessons or what have you, let me know.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Absolutely, absolutely. Where do we get a hold of you, Brian?

SPEAKER_01 38:37

How can we find out more, more of your analysis?agmarket.net. It's what we name the company. Very easy. General phone line, 844-424-6758. And if you want to talk to me directly, it's 815-665-0463.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Brian Split from Agmarket.net. Thanks a ton, my brother. Jed Sidwell pulling double duty on Monday. First, as the host of the morning ag squawk, and then he'll be my guest in the afternoon to run through the market's happy semi quincentennial to us all. Thanks for being here on Ag Squawk this afternoon and God bless America.