Here’s a fun piece of market trivia: while everyone on Wall Street was losing their minds over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, the real money was being made in… cows.
Yes, cattle. The thing you grill on a Saturday. Eighteen months after Trump promised to slash beef prices on day one of his election, retail beef is sitting at a record $6.74 per pound. That’s about 18% higher than it was during President Joe Biden’s last year in office. And the futures market for the animals themselves has been quietly minting returns that would embarrass your average AI-linked tech portfolio.
Since Trump’s election victory on November 5, 2024, feeder cattle futures have surged 51.85% and live cattle futures are up 33.09%. Over the same period, the S&P 500—as tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY)—gained 17.22%. So cattle more than tripled and doubled the broad market’s return, respectively.
This isn’t a fluke. Zoom out. Over four years, feeder cattle futures gained 131% and live cattle 84%, against 51% for the S&P 500. Over five years: feeder cattle up 146%, live cattle up 101%, SPY up 64%. Even in a compressed two-year window, feeder cattle still lead at 55% versus 30% for SPY.
| Period (through April 8, 2026) | Feeder Cattle Futures (GF!) | Live Cattle (LE!) | SPY |
|---|---|---|---|
| YTD | +4.30% | +4.21% | -1.05% |
| Since Trump election (Nov 5, 2024) | +51.85% | +33.09% | +17.22% |
| 2-year | +55.16% | +41.89% | +30.32% |
| 3-year | +78.97% | +50.23% | +65.00% |
| 4-year | +130.90% | +83.77% | +51.04% |
| 5-year | +145.96% | +100.60% | +64.00% |
The Herd Is Historically Tiny
So why is beef so expensive and why are cattle futures going gangbusters? It’s simple, really: we’re running out of cows.
The U.S. cattle herd—the total count of all cattle and calves—stood at 86.2 million head as of January 1, 2026, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is the smallest herd since 1951. It’s down from a recent peak of 94.7 million in 2019, and it has been shrinking for eight straight years. The USDA doesn’t expect a meaningful expansion before 2028 at the earliest.
Think of it like a factory that keeps idling production lines while customers keep ordering the same number of burgers. Eventually, the backlog becomes structural, and price is the only thing that rations supply.
This is the cattle cycle in its contraction phase. It’s a natural 8-to-12 year rhythm of herd expansion and contraction driven by prices, drought, and, crucially, biology. A cow takes nine months to gestate and another 18 to 24 months for her calf to reach slaughter weight. There is no quick fix. We’re now in the 13th year of the current cycle and the eighth year of contraction. Each year of delay just makes the next year’s problem worse.
A Triple Whammy of Supply Shocks
If the herd shortage is the slow-burn story, early 2026 provided the fireworks. The market absorbed three simultaneous blows—each independently bullish for prices, and collectively historic.
First, the U.S. reinstated a suspension on cattle imports from Mexico in May, after New World Screwworm cases were detected as far north as the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. This matters because Mexico historically supplies about 62% of all U.S. live cattle imports, mostly lightweight feeder cattle destined for U.S. feedlots.
Second, wildfires across the Nebraska plains wiped out grazing land and forced ranchers to send cattle to market early. That might sound like a temporary increase in supply, but it actually tightens the forward pipeline because those animals won’t be available later.
Third, in March, approximately 3,800 workers at the JBS N.V. (JBS) packing plant in Greeley, Colorado went on strike. They idled a facility that handles roughly 5% to 7% of total U.S. beef slaughter capacity for three weeks.
The USDA’s March 2026 outlook reflected all this pressure. It lowered the 2026 beef production projection by 110 million pounds from the prior month to 25.810 billion pounds, citing a sharp decline in fed cattle slaughter expected in the first quarter.
According to Russell Knight, an agricultural economist at the USDA, slaughter steer prices are now forecasted to reach $242.00 per hundredweight (cwt) and feeder steer prices to $367.25 per cwt this year.
The agency also raised its beef import forecast to 5.675 billion pounds while cutting export forecasts to 2.395 billion pounds. That’s a telling sign: record-high domestic prices are pricing U.S. beef out of overseas markets, even as the country has to rely more on imports to fill its own supply gap.
Analyst group FCS America projects available fed cattle supplies in the first quarter of 2026 to run 6% to 7% smaller than a year prior.
Through it all, demand has held firm. "Consumer beef demand and spending remain strong and supportive of cattle prices," said Dave Weaber, senior animal protein analyst at Terrain. He added a pointed note on politics: "presidential and executive branch rhetoric about lowering beef prices has had little to no impact on retail and wholesale beef prices."
So there you have it. While the headlines screamed about trade wars and distant conflicts, the humble cow—backed by biology, weather, and stubborn economics—quietly became one of the market’s best performers. And no amount of campaign-trail promises has been able to steer it in a different direction.
