Caught up on some older cattle futures action from late January and it's interesting to see how the market reacted. Live cattle contracts were mostly down that Friday, dropping 47 cents to $1.75 across the board, though February bucked the trend with a 35-cent pop on cash strength. That weekly gain hit 95 cents, which is solid. Cash settled around $238-240 live and $375-378 dressed. Feeder cattle took a bigger hit, down $4.85 to $5 in the nearby contracts. The CME Feeder Cattle Index bounced back $4 to $370.69. What stood out was the USDA cattle inventory report that week. Total cattle and calves came in down 0.37% year-over-year at 86.155 million head. Beef cows were 27.607 million, down 1.02%, while replacement heifers actually ticked up 0.89% to 4.714 million. On the positioning side, managed money was adding contracts aggressively. They threw 4,208 new longs into live cattle futures that week, bringing their net position to over 105k contracts. Feeder cattle saw specs add 546 contracts too. Slaughter numbers came in at 531,000 head, which was down from the prior week and notably lower than the year-ago comparison. Mixed signals in the cattle complex that week, but the inventory data definitely influenced how traders were positioning.