Sugar #11 Mar ’22
The past couple of days have seen sugar decline and move against the wider neutral/supportive macro, and with that macro element now showing mostly lower this morning there was little reason to suggest we would recover in any significant way. Early trading was rather calm though the lack of any noteworthy interest from end/user consumers made it easy for specs/day traders to continue the trend and send March’22 initially down beneath 18.30 before stabilising nearer to unchanged levels. A very small push to 18.39 at the start of the Americas day raised the possibility that the market may be looking to bottom however it did not last for very long and the afternoon pattern soon became another of steady decline. Scale buying across the board ensured that the activity remained orderly, though with volume well below 100,000 lots there was never any real possibility of fireworks. An afternoon upturn in crude prices had no impact at all on the trend and some slightly more aggressive selling ahead of the close recorded a new low mark at 18.15 to ensure that the technical picture would remain weak. Settlement was made at 18.19 ahead of some end of day position squaring, with the only glimmer of hope for bulls coming from the spreads which refuse to buckle in recent days and saw March/May’22 a little former at 0.27 points despite the flat price weakness.
Sugar #5 Mar’22
A choppy opening saw March’22 continue to find support against underlying scale buying and following a period of consolidation it led the rest of the board into positive ground with a push up to $490.50, on which the March/May’22 spread widened out to $6.50. Ahead of the US-day we held at the upper end of the range with whites against performing better than the No.11, however as pressure was applied elsewhere so selling filtered back through to our market and send prices slipping back toward morning lows. Volume was solid for the front two prompts with assistance from the spread, but there remained little activity down the board despite the pressure being applied. New lows were recorded during the final couple of hours with March’22 slipping below the Dec’20th $486.50 low mark, though support remains through to $482.50 and we held well above this with a daily low at $485.50. Settlement was only a small way above this level at $486.10 and though the post close saw a push up against short covering it means little should the specs keep the pressure on tomorrow.
