The market found early support to continue the upward path forged yesterday, and Jul’24 reached 19.28 before pausing to consolidate. Producer selling remained overhead and so as the buying eased, we saw prices fall back into the range, the necessary impetus drive through clearly lacking with the larger spec volumes. By early afternoon, the price had retreated to sit at 19.07 however the arrival of US specs provided the necessary shot in the arm to reinvigorate proceedings and a move back to the early highs followed. Progress slowed wither side of 19.30 against the scale selling, but the buying proved determined and soon afterwards there was a push through 19.37 to trade the highest price seen in a month. Having extended to 19.45 the market saw another pause as the continuing grower selling across the front part of the board limited progress, and the market maintained a holding pattern until the final hour. At this stage there was another aggressive push which triggered more short covering to send the price on to 19.64 ahead of the call. End of day position squaring arrived to send Jul’24 back down through the 19.50’s, though overall it was a positive day with settlement at 19.59 bringing 20c into view and the potential for more spec short covering ahead of the weekend.
Aug’24 was out of the traps quickly this morning with initial buying taking the price up by $6 before pausing to take stock. Gradually the market slipped back down through the range and by the end of the morning was trading within 0.50c of unchanged and appearing quiet. This changed soon after with fresh impetus provided by US specs and in short time the front of the board had rallied back to the early highs to be challenging the scale selling placed ahead of the recent $565.00 high. Progress was proving harder, and it took a slow grind to work through the mid $560’s, lagging the progress being made for No.11 with the Aug/Jul’24 arbitrage remaining in the mid $130’s. The final couple of hours did see new 4-week highs achieved though there was no fanfare to the move and progress simply maintained at a steady pace with specs already long of whites. Aug’24 closing value at $567.40 was just 0.60c short of the highs, leaving the market well position to try and continue the upward push tomorrow.
