Lean Hogs and Pork Bellies Commodity Trading Tips

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We provide you with information on lean hogs trading and pork belly futures in commodities trading and lean hog markets.

Tips on Belly Trading

Whether you're a seasoned, savvy trader or a new investor looking into the different markets available for trading and speculating, it behooves you to receive tips on trading in these various markets as they can not only refresh you on some things you may have already known, but also provide some information that you may not have thought about prior to trading. Some tips for trading pork bellies (as well as lean hogs) are:

Paper trade first! This is an essential learning tool that will not only help you gain confidence in when your market(s) are traded, the symbols used, tick sizes, and (on the most extreme trading days) daily price limits (if there are any!), but will also teach you quite a bit about what tools are available to help you in your trading. Such reports as Hogs and Pigs contain essential information and may help you figure out just exactly what the markets may (or may not) do.

Consult your Commodity Broker! Aside from the savants and those with incredible luck, it would be a futile endeavor to trade any market without the help of a broker. A Commodity brokers are supposed to be your guide and mentor - your trading confidant. A good broker has a vast amount of constantly-updated information at his/her fingertips and is a valued resource by any trading standard.

Educate yourself on bellies! Registering for our FREE report, 6 Things You Need to Know About Hogs, is a great first step. This report details quite a few important aspects of the back-end of the industry, providing traders (seasoned and prospective alike) with information that may better educate them on the intricacies of the pork belly and lean hog markets.

Settle for one source of information! You should be actively searching for all of the information you can find to give yourself as many useful angles on the pork belly and lean hog markets as you can. Not only does this provide you with those extra angles to approach a market from, but extra sources of information may help to keep a system of checks-and-balances against each other.

Mix up the two markets! While swine, pig, and hog are used interchangeably throughout the agricultural market, it is important to understand that there are specific differences between trading lean hogs and pork bellies when trading those contracts. Each Pork belly contract is 40,000 pounds of bellies cut and trimmed - in other words, bacon. Lean hog contracts are 40,000 pounds of whole pig carcasses. While the aforementioned terms may be interchangeable, it is very, very important to recognize that these two markets are not.

Forget the economic and biological hog cycles! Don't know what these are? In our FREE report, 6 Things You Need to Know About Hogs, we detail both of these cycles and what they mean to you. This may help you determine whether buying or selling is the right choice and how to apply the information provided to you in such reports as Hogs and Pigs.

Different Ways to Trade Bellies

We're not talking about a new abdominal workout here; in this section we're all about buying and selling pork bellies and lean hogs!

First and foremost, it is best that you understand exactly what it is you're trading:

Pork Bellies Through the Ages

Pork bellies, another agricultural market, initially hit the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1961, but the beginning of pork in America can be attributed to the "father of the pork industry": Hernando de Soto. He landed in what is now Tampa Bay, Florida, with the first 13 pigs to set foot in America; some of the worst attacks on De Soto's camps were due to the popularity of the taste of pork itself. Although De Soto died a mere 3 years later, his herd of pigs grew to over 700 head, not including the pigs that ran away and became the wild pigs you can find in such areas as Arkansas and Mississippi.

Did you know?: At one point, the Ohio city of Cincinnati was so well-known for its massive amount of commercial pig slaughtering that it was referred to as "Porkopolis"!

The word "pork" came into the English language as part of the Norman Conquest; moreover, there were more than 500 different culinary-based words brought forth by the French during that time. In China, pork is considered to be a "sweeter, cleaner" flavor than beef. Since cows are used for farm work, beef is believed to be a less appealing source of protein than pork since pigs are bred purely for their meat and carcasses.

Did you know?: Colonists in New York had grain fields aplenty; however, when semi-wild pigs began running amuck and tearing apart their crop, local officials decreed that any owned pig above 14 inches in height needed to have a ring put in it's nose!

In the 1850's, bringing your pigs from your farm in the Midwest to the markets in the East proved to be quite the daunting task. "Drovers" were people that would move around 8 miles a day, tending about 100 pigs per person, in an attempt to bring them from the farm to the market, then from the market to the slaughterhouse. With the advent of refrigerated train cars, it only made sense to keep the slaughterhouses by the farms - transporting the already butchered meat would do much to improve sale at the market as well as to include more potential buyers outside of those who could afford to buy whole pigs.

But what about the actual process the pigs go through from birth to slaughter? How can changes in these production methods effect what you see on your trading screen? Registering for our FREE report, 6 Things You Need to Know About Hogs, can help answer those questions for you - and more!

Ways to Trade Pork Bellies | Learn About Trading CME Hog Futures

Trading pork bellies and lean hogs - apart from the fact that they are separate markets with individual specifications - is not too different from trading anything else. Many markets have basic trading seasons in which certain products are produced and/or sold in higher quantities than in other times of the year. While it may seem simple to follow this seasonal trend, it is not quite as simple as buying during one point of the year and selling during another. Certain reports that come out (for pork bellies and lean hogs, a very important report is Hogs and Pigs, as distributed by the USDA quarterly) may provide critical information that may help you with your decision-making when the time comes to trade. Most importantly, never feel rushed; just because a news headline informed you that there was a small outbreak of disease among hogs in China or that pig production in the Midwest is slowing, there is no reason to act hastily. Always do your due diligence by checking and double-checking everything you see and hear! For more

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You can find knowledge on lean hogs and pork bellies, how they are in the market.