Daily market report
Boxed beef prices today
The wholesale beef cutout, updated daily. If you sell cattle, this is the number that decides how much room the packer has to bid on your next load.
Today's cutout values
Values are dollars per hundredweight of carcass, from negotiated wholesale sales reported to USDA the same afternoon.
What the cutout actually is
The cutout is the value of all the beef cuts from a carcass, added back up and expressed per hundredweight. It is the packer's revenue line. Cattle prices are the packer's cost line, and the gap between them is the packer margin.
When the cutout climbs and cattle supplies are tight, that margin is what funds higher bids on fed cattle — usually with a lag of days to a couple of weeks.
Why the Choice–Select spread matters to a cow-calf producer
The spread is what the market is paying for quality grade. A wide spread rewards genetics that marble — and that reward travels back down the chain to the calves you sell, because feedyards bid more for cattle they expect to grade Choice or better.
It is seasonal too: the spread usually widens into late summer and the holidays as middle meats sell, and narrows in the spring.
Two weeks of daily values
Watch direction more than level. Three straight higher closes on the cutout with steady slaughter is a friendlier market than one big day.
Keep reading
Source: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Livestock, Poultry and Grain Market News, refreshed automatically every day. These are national and regional wholesale numbers, not a quote for any one animal. Your local sale barn report is the truest read on your area.