Amidst the usual commodity doom and gloom, coffee could be a bright spot. Coffee futures prices (ICE Exchange) were $2.93/lb when 50% tariffs were imposed on Brazil in Aug 2025. That sent coffee soaring to a record-high of $4.32 by Nov.

In Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Feb 1st were 11.51M head, 1.8% below a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in Jan were down 4.7%. In a sign that high prices might be dampening beef demand, cattle marketings in Jan were 13.0% below a year ago.

Two reports released last week have us cautiously optimistic. First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the U.S. economy added 130,000 net new jobs in Jan – after averaging just 59,000 per month for all of 2025. New jobs are still hard to come by. In Dec, there were just 6.5M open positions, down from 7.5M at the end of 2024.

While the real numbers aren’t in yet, it’s estimated that roughly 1.5B chicken wings were consumed on Super Bowl Sunday. At an average of 9 wings per pound, that’s 167M pounds of wings. With wing prices at $.69/lb below a year ago on Friday (2/6), that’s a potential cost reduction of over $100M for the day.