The Latest: September - 2025
No Bulls to Be Found on LaSalle Street
There were no bulls to be found on LaSalle Street this week. The bears roamed freely, showing no fear of an overcorrection even as parts of the dairy complex scored multi-year lows. Red ink poured into the cheese and milk powder trade and deluged the butter market. CME spot butter plummeted to $1.86 per pound, down 16.25ȼ in just five trading sessions. Spot butter is down more than 40% from the mid-summer high, languishing at its lowest level since October 2021, nearly four years ago. The weakness carried across the futures board, with May through October 2026 contracts dropping 10ȼ or more on Friday.
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The novel coronavirus has strangled foodservice and export channels, and the industry simply has more milk than it can handle. With so much lost demand, the dairy industry must cut production. The market is laboring ruthlessly to make that happen.
View reportThe retail surge has petered out. Consumers are still standing in the grocery checkout line with more dairy in their cart but the industry cannot make up for lost foodservice demand and throttled exports.
View reportThose numbers clearly won’t pay the bills, and after four painful years (and a couple good months) dairy producers are in no shape to weather this storm.
View reportStrong fluid milk consumption will benefit the whole industry by reducing dairy product output at a time when overall demand is likely taking a sizable hit.
View reportPlunging stocks, cheap oil, and a strong dollar would normally spell disaster in the dairy markets. There was a lot of red ink on LaSalle Street but the damage was not nearly as extreme as feared.
View reportThe dairy markets sprinted out of the gate on Monday, but they couldn’t sustain such an energetic pace. The dairy markets are fixated on the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its potential impact on the economy and consumer behavior. However, there are a lot of good things to be said about dairy market fundamentals.
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