The market started the day quietly within touching distance of unchanged levels before the lack of progress encouraged a degree of selling to send March’23 back into the 18.30’s as the morning progressed. Still things were calm, and it was only once we moved into the afternoon that there was an increase in volumes, selling again the driving force as smaller specs looked to chop back out of some recent longs. The higher levels have reduced the level of consumer activity and so prices slipped easily to 18.15 before finding a foothold to maintain above yesterday’s lows and leave the 18.05/18.00 untroubled. With specs continuing to drive the movement the market saw a resurgence during the later stages with a push back up through the same thin range to touch unchanged levels once more. Despite the recovery there was a disappointing showing from the nearby spreads which gave back a little of the recent gains as March/May’23 traded down to 0.97 points, however the environment was generally quiet as we edged towards the close. Buying emerged for the call to ensure modest gains were recorded down the board, though despite reaching 18.49, and settling at 18.47 March’23 maintained an inside day on the chart and looks set to remain constrained to the broad 17.50/19.00 band.
There has been a good deal of intra-day price volatility of late and this trend continued as nearby values received a shot in the arm from early buying, taking Dec’22 to $541.40 within the first hour. This movement stretched the Dec’22/March’23 spread out to $36.70 with spec support continuing to hold prices through the morning, however with the rest of the board struggling to follow suit and some fund rolling taking place so prices started to retreat during the middle of the day. Buyers were sparse and so the rolling not only pushed Dec’22/March’23 back in to $28.30 but also sent the spot month to $527.60 before any meaningful buying was uncovered. This enabled prices to edge back away from the lows and reinvigorated day traders to push prices north again during the final hour. With spec activities moving towards March’23 the closing stages saw the front two prompts both trading around $4 higher to provide some positivity to the session with settlement at $536.80 for Dec’22 and $507.00 in March’23, though in the wider scheme of things nothing has really changed.
