Market direction continues to be dictated by the macro situation, however within that picture Sugar remained quite resilient and experienced smaller losses than others within the CRB sector. Having fallen to 13.88 during early trading the May’20 contract settled into a pattern of consolidation with values holding either side of 14c on moderate volumes. Focus was meanwhile centred around the March’20 tenders with the open interest figure of 19.375 lots suggesting that a tender of around 900,000mt would be seen once today’s final position squaring had been taken into consideration. The only real change to the flat price scenario occurred during the final couple of hours as first we declined to a new recent low mark of 13.86 before defensive buying emerged from longs to take the price back above 14c, potentially in defence of the weekly charts though it may also have been some end of week profit taking! Closing activity was near to session highs to ensure only minimal losses at the end of a brutal week.
Tonight’s March’20 tenders are anticipated to see around 900,000mt delivered into the tape, with Brazil the largest origin. Wilmar are expected to be the sold receiver. Full details will be issued on Monday.
