An immediate drop to 17.50 for March’22 saw the market immediately break this week’s pattern of inside days, and the pressure remained on the market through the morning with prices sliding to 17.43. Scale buying started to show an increase in this area, which enabled prices to pull away from the lows ahead o9f the US morning getting underway, the rally then continuing as specs and day trades covered shorts / attempted to push back higher. A mixed macro picture was showing no influence over proceedings and so having climbed to the 17.80 area a failure to continue and remain confined to the range was to be expected. Alongside this slow showing the Oct’22/March’23 meandered towards Fridays expiration by trading across the 0.60’s on lower volumes, to be expected now the Open interest has reduced to 32,901 lots, suggesting we will only see a moderate tonnage tendered. Having fallen away from the highs the final two hours saw March’23 confined to a tight 6-point band, and settlement established at 17.71, a neutral showing in line with the continuing range bound prognosis.
In amongst various weaknesses across the commodity sector of late the whites have stood up remarkably well, and that pattern continued this morning (albeit with some macro support for a change) as Dec’22 worked up to $539.20. For a change, the gains did not prove sustainable, maybe with some irony given the macro picture, and having retreated to unchanged the market simply entered a dull, sideways pattern which prevailed for several hours, finding some consumer pricing support along the way to aid the stability. It felt as though this may be the pattern for the rest of the day however a mid-afternoon collapse towards $530.00 in reaction to falling No.11 values was a somewhat surprising reaction and brought some weakness to white premium values. Consolidation followed before the pressure cranked up again ahead of the close, sending Dec’22 to an eventual low at $526.50, while the March/March’23 white premium reached $105.00. Given the heavy spec presence in markets some late position squaring is to be expected and a sharp rally ensued back through $530 to bring us away from the lows, although with settlement made at $528.30 it will still classify as something of a disappointing showing overall.
