Market Reports

The ink ran red on LaSalle Street once again this week. The milk powder market led the retreat, with dramatic declines in CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But the bulls evinced some cautious optimism on Thursday, the last trading day of this holiday-shortened week, when spot NDM found a toehold and inched up slightly. Spot NDM finished the week at $1.64 per pound, down 14.5ȼ from last Friday.

What goes up must come down, and the milk powder market is no exception to the laws of gravity. This week, CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) demonstrated Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, the one that describes equal and opposite reactions. Spot NDM dropped just as quickly and dramatically as it soared. It fell 26ȼ in five trading sessions to $1.785 per pound, a three-month low.

The dairy markets are falling under the weight of heavy milk production. CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) dropped 4.5ȼ this week to $2.045 per pound. Every NDM futures contract settled south of $2, far below the spot market’s spring peak at nearly $2.30. Spot whey powder fell 3ȼ this week to 67ȼ, its lowest price since late March. CME spot Cheddar blocks slipped 0.25ȼ to $1.4725, a fresh three-month low. But butter bucked the trend. It climbed 2.5ȼ to $1.6925.

After a heart-stopping plunge off the cliff, the milk powder markets found a ledge and clambered upward. CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) regained 1.75ȼ this week and closed at $2.09 per pound. That’s well below the recent peak, but it’s a historically lofty perch from which the market can pause, catch its breath, and determine if it has the strength to keep climbing, or if it should continue the descent toward historically normal levels that are far below today’s prices.

When Wile E. Coyote plummets off a cliff, Warner Brothers inevitably plays a “descending slide whistle.” That heart-dropping sound echoed across LaSalle Street this week as the bottom fell out of the milk powder market. The short squeeze is over. The two milk powder manufacturers who were desperately bidding for product to meet the commitments they could not fill with their own supplies due to food safety recalls have likely caught up and are back to using their own powder. And sky-high prices have killed demand from other buyers.

The dairy markets retreated this week, led by a 6.75ȼ drop in Cheddar blocks. CME spot Cheddar closed at $1.555 per pound, within a tic of its lowest price in two months. Cheesemakers continue to crank out product. Domestic demand is climbing, but not as quickly as production. In the first quarter, U.S. cheese output was 3.1% greater than the year before, while domestic consumption climbed 2.3%. Exports absorbed the surplus and then some. But the industry can’t count on exports to use up our excess cheese unless we’re the world’s least expensive source.