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LH SPECIALIST · Livestock / Supply Reference

Z3289 – LH Weekly Hog Slaughter YoY

Weekly federally-inspected hog kill against the same week a year ago. Context, not a sizing input.

At a glance

As of Nov 02, 2026. Updated nightly.

SIGNAL OVERVIEW

This is a diagnostic signal, not a sized trading signal. Weekly US hog slaughter is reported by USDA every Friday for the prior week, and the deviation from the same week a year ago is one of the simplest supply numbers a hog trader can read. We show it here so readers of the Lean Hogs news page can see at a glance whether slaughter is running hot or cold against last year. The grade is honest at D: in-sample backtesting cannot find a statistically meaningful forecast of forward lean-hog returns from this reading. 60-day information coefficient is approximately +0.007, hit rate sits at 49.4%, permutation p-value is 0.82. There is no sized trading edge in this series, and we are not pretending there is one. The reading is useful as context (is kill running tight or heavy relative to last year, and in which direction is the trend moving) and should be composited alongside breeding-herd, cold-storage, cutout, and basis signals rather than read on its own.

LIVE CHART

THE TAKEAWAY

THE REGIME MAP

State distribution and forward-return sample across 8,709 trading days. The signal is DIAGNOSTIC: linear forecast of forward Lean Hogs returns from this reading is empirically zero at the 60-day horizon. The three states have forward-return means within half a percentage point of baseline — no bucket spread, no sized directional edge.

Forward returns measured against Lean Hogs 60-day forward price windows across the 8,709-day sample (1992-03-26 to 2026-10-28). The bucket spread across the three states is approximately 0.7 percentage points, well below the sample standard deviation — the signal does not meaningfully separate forward Lean Hogs returns by regime bucket. This matches the Grade D validation: diagnostic context, not a sized sizing lever.

The historical pattern

THE TRACK RECORD

91 state transitions from 11/07/2024 to 10/28/2026. Full history (257 total transitions since 03/26/1992) is downloadable.

Scroll inside the table for the full history. Forward 60-day Lean Hogs is measured from each run’s start date; a reader cannot trade off a start-date they only identify in hindsight, so this is a transparency log, not an alpha claim. Asterisked (*) returns are partial. The run is less than 60 trading days old. The full 60-day comparable fills in as more data arrives.

The signal reads USDA NASS weekly federally-inspected hog slaughter, totaled across all classes. The weekly series is reindexed daily, scored as a year-over-year ratio against its three-year rolling baseline, sign-flipped so an upward surprise reads negative for Lean Hogs, and tanh-bounded to the plus-or-minus one scale. Classified into a five-state regime machine.

The Lean Hogs analytics stack this weekly slaughter diagnostic plugs into. The weekly kill reading is useful as context when read against the structural supply reads (Breeding Herd Lead, Hog-Corn Ratio, Pork Cold Storage Inversion) and the event-driven Hogs and Pigs quarterly surprise.

Not investment advice · The analysis on this page is informational and educational. Signal readings, historical case figures, and empirical statistics are derived from publicly available data and are provided without warranty. Hypothetical performance results have inherent limitations, including the benefit of hindsight. Readers who intend to trade should consult a licensed investment professional and see the research brief for the full disclaimer.

Last refreshed Nov 03, 2026 05:34 AM ET