Butter’s slipping, cheese feels heavy, but the protein complex is flexing hard.



In this Milk Check market roundtable, Ted Jacoby III brings together Diego Carvallo, Jacob Menge, Joe Maixner and Josh White to unpack what’s driving the mixed messages in the markets.



Listen to hear:








Why butter could fall below $1.50 before year-end



How global health trends are powering whey protein demand



Why cheese exports are getting harder to move



Whether dairy’s bearish mood could trigger a short squeeze




It’s a classic Milk Check market roundtable. Listen now to The Milk Check episode 86: Bears in Butter, Bulls in Protein.



Got questions?



Got questions for The Milk Check team? We’ve got answers. Submit your questions below and we’d be happy to get back to you or answer your question on the podcast.




Ask The Milk Check












Ted Jacoby III: Hey everybody, welcome to The Milk Check. We're gonna have an old-fashioned market discussion today. We've got a lot going on in dairy markets right now.



It's the middle of October. Markets are moving, but not in the direction that they usually move in October. It seems like everything wants to go down right now, and we'll start with the product that seems to be most bearish today, the one we've been talking about a lot lately. Joe, what is going on with butter?



Joe Maixner: Butter is interesting today because we're actually up. Long-term Sentiment really hasn't changed. There's not really a whole lot new to talk about on the butter. Markets aren't linear, so we're gonna have these choppy trades here and there where some buying comes in and things get pushed. But there's plenty of butter still out there. There's plenty of butter being offered out there. Right now, there's a good amount of demand, but we're anticipating that that's fairly short-lived. We've got [00:01:00] holiday demand for another couple of weeks here, and then that should probably tail off. We'll see what happens after that.



Ted Jacoby III: So we're a $1.60 and a $1.65 today. It's Friday, October 10th. Felt like a little bit of a dead cat bounce after really dropping pretty hard earlier in the week. Is that what it is? Is it a dead cat bounce?



Joe Maixner: I wouldn't call a quarter of a cent on spot a dead cat bounce.



The moves on the futures are 3¢ to 5¢ moves with a 10¢ plus move intraday. There's no shortage of volatility.



Ted Jacoby III: What do you think will be happening in the next month? You think maybe we'll bounce off this, go up a little bit for the next couple of weeks? Then all the orders that need to get filled for the holidays get filled? And then what?



Joe Maixner: I think we take another leg lower. I think we'll be sub $1.50 before the end of the year.



Ted Jacoby III: I agree. We're at prices so low that a year ago it would've been really hard to imagine we'd ever get here.



And the idea that we could even go lower from here just seems unbelievable, but that's the market we're in right now.



Joe Maixner: Less than 24 months ago, we were all talking about $4 butter [00:02:00] coming, and there was not enough fat to keep up with demand. And now we're potentially going to the $1.40s. There's so much fat that we can't consume it all. But we also have to remember that this is all cyclical, and at some point, these low prices are gonna cure the low prices.