Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI
Dirk Adams, with the assistance of AI
Update — HCMI v2.1 (July 22, 2026): the Montana leg of the forward curve is now actually Montana. It had been parsed from the USDA AMS video report, which pools Montana into a seven-state North Central region (CO, IA, MT, ND, NE, SD, WY) and never breaks out state of origin — so the index’s “Montana” forward leg was a regional number wearing a Montana label. It is now built lot by lot from the auction houses’ own published results — Northern Livestock Video Auction, Superior Livestock, Western Video Market — and filtered to lots carrying a published Montana shipping or delivery point. The change was not cosmetic: on the first run, the December 2026 steer leg moved from $518.00 on 340 regional head to $469.08 on 3,527 Montana head. Where a delivery month has no Montana-origin lots, the regional parse remains as a fallback and is flagged with that caveat wherever it is used. The spot index, the four weights, and the 2024 base period are unchanged.
Update — HCMI v2 (July 17, 2026): the index now publishes provisional weekly prints when USDA skips a Montana auction summary (futures legs fresh, Montana legs carried at the last USDA print, flagged provisional), and it carries a six-month forward curve built from transacted prices only — deferred CME settles plus forward-delivery video-auction sales. No leg of the index, spot or forward, is ever an Honest Cattle estimate. The historical series and methodology below are unchanged. Full explanation of what changed and why: HCMI v2 — What Is Changing, and Why.
The Montana Cattle Index — the Honest Cattle Market Index, or HCMI — is a public, reproducible, rancher-facing benchmark of cattle-market conditions for Montana and Northern Plains cow-calf producers. It answers one practical question every week: relative to a recent normal year, are cattle-price conditions getting better or worse for an outfit like yours?
The index is anchored so that the 2024 calendar-year average equals 100. A reading above 100 means conditions sit above the 2024 average; below 100 means worse. Rising index, improving price conditions; falling index, deteriorating. It is a thermometer, not a crystal ball.
The current reading is published every Monday in the Honest Cattle Weekly Market Forecast, with the week it covers, the date it was computed, and the source of every leg stated on the face of it. This page describes how the number is built; the forecast is where the number lives. We do not carry a headline value here, because a methodology page quoting last quarter’s reading would be doing precisely what this index was built not to do.
Why we built it
The big livestock indices you see quoted are built for commodity traders — weighted toward what is investable and liquid, not toward what a rancher actually sells. We wanted the opposite: a benchmark weighted to a real Montana revenue mix, built only from free, public, citable data (CME settlements and USDA reports), and specified clearly enough that anyone holding the methodology can rebuild it from scratch. No black box, no subscription, no trader’s-eye view. If we cannot show our work, we do not print the number.
What is in it
Four prices a cow-calf producer lives and dies by, blended by fixed weights:
| Component | Weight | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| CME Feeder Cattle futures | 42.1% | The national feeder board — the forward-looking anchor |
| CME Live Cattle futures | 26.3% | The fed-cattle ceiling feedyards bid against |
| Montana 600–650 lb feeder steer cash | 21.1% | The local calf market, from Montana auctions |
| Montana boning cull cow cash | 10.5% | The cull-cow check — real cow-calf revenue |
Two-thirds futures (the deep national signal), one-third Montana cash (the local signal a generic index lacks). Hay is deliberately left out of the headline — it is a cost, not revenue, so folding it in would make the index rise when hay gets expensive, which is backwards. We track hay separately in the weekly forecast, off the USDA Montana Hay Report.
How it is built
Each of the four prices is turned into its own index versus its 2024 average, then the four are blended by the weights above. The futures bases are the 2024 daily-settlement averages from CME; the two Montana cash bases are head-weighted averages of the USDA Montana auction reports for all of 2024. As a check, we rebuilt the feeder anchor a second, completely independent way — from twelve states’ worth of USDA auction data, nearly a million head — and the two methods agreed within 0.3%.
How to read it
- 100 is the 2024 average. Above 100 is better-than-2024 conditions; below is worse.
- Watch the move, not just the level. A one- or two-point weekly change is the actionable signal — it says which way the wind shifted this week.
- It is revenue conditions, not profit. The index does not know your costs, your basis, or your marketing timing. It tells you what the price environment is doing, not what is in your pocket.
- It is not advice or a forecast. It is a measurement. The weekly forecast is where we turn it into an outlook.
The fine print (because honest is in the name)
- The Montana 600–650 lb steer leg resolves in three steps, in this order: the USDA AMS-1778 head-weighted average for 600–650 lb Medium and Large 1 and 1-2 steers when at least 150 head traded; failing that, the same average widened to a 550–700 lb band when that band clears 150 head; failing that, the last solid print carried forward and flagged, rather than chasing a handful of head.
- That leg has been carrying since June 2026 — longer than a summer gap, and long enough to say so here rather than only in the weekly. It is not a reporting lag. When we went to the individual Montana auction reports in September 2026 to source the leg directly instead of waiting on the statewide summary, we found the class barely trading: across every Montana barn reporting that week, zero weaned 600–649 lb steers sold, and 116 weaned steers of all weights statewide. No change of data source fixes a market that is not transacting. While the leg carries, 21.1 percent of the index is not moving, and every weekly print says so on its face.
- The futures legs use the front-month contract on a continuous basis; a finer contract-roll rule is a planned refinement.
- Every weekly print shows its inputs and dates — current data is never quietly swapped for stale data.
Methodology and Sources
- CME Group front-month Feeder Cattle (GF) and Live Cattle (LE) daily settlements
- USDA AMS Montana Weekly Livestock Auction Summary (AMS-1778), head-weighted
- USDA AMS twelve-state feeder cattle auction reports (feeder-base cross-validation)
- USDA AMS Montana Hay Report (AMS_2769) — the hay companion carried in the weekly forecast, quoted with its print date and never presented as fresh when USDA has not reprinted
- Honest Cattle Market Index Methodology Paper, version 1.1, as amended by v2.0 (provisional weekly prints and the forward curve, July 17, 2026) and v2.1 (Montana-origin forward steer leg, July 22, 2026). Components, weights and the 2024 base period are unchanged from v1.1.
The Montana Cattle Index is an information tool, not investment, hedging, or financial advice. Methodology last reviewed: September 14, 2026.
Related
- From Grid to Gate: How Cattle Futures Carry Grid Economics Back to Montana Calf Bids
- Getting Paid for What You Shipped: The Calf Weight Problem
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Quarterly steer and heifer price ranges, the trade and policy backdrop, drought and forage signals, and our reading of how it all lands on the ranch — published weekly, with the assistance of AI.