It was a very slow morning for the market as Oct’24 dug in to hold on to minimal gains for the first few hours, edging along in the mid 19.40’s and never making it beyond the early 19.53 high. Given the current trend this was insufficient to keep the sellers at bay and no sooner had we moved past noon and signalled the start of the Americas day that pressure was reapplied to the market. Across a couple of hours Oct’24 fell back to 19.24 before a sharp recovery took place on short covering, though this proved to be only temporary respite. A burst of mid-afternoon selling sent the price down to new daily lows, and though trading remained quite choppy in keeping with the primarily spec driven participation there was proving little interest in propping values up ahead of the weekend. Nearby spreads were only mildly weaker with Oct’24/March’25 at -0.42 points, however the flat price was heading into the weekend at the bottom end of its range, concluding a sixth successive session of lower lows by trading down to 19.18 on the call and posting a settlement at 19.20. Tonight sees publication of the COT report up until cob Tuesday, likely showing the spec position having turned back to the short side once again.
It was a slow morning of trading as Oct’24 held onto moderate gains, however there seemed to be little desire to push values up in any significant way with most of the buying confined to underlying scales. Reaching the early afternoon that the picture became a little more interesting and it was the downside being explored with the recent $545.00 low mark broken as spec pressure was applied. The scale buying did limit the losses however and most of the afternoon was spent chopping along in the mid $540’s without threatening to move very far. White premium values were calmer than in recent sessions with Oct/Oct’24 comfortably holding the $119/$120 area, providing the feeling that many traders had completed any necessary positioning ahead of the weekend. Aug’24 open interest has meanwhile fallen to just 5,752 lots, and with today seeing another solid volume which included more than 3,000 lots of the Aug/Oct’24 spread there may be little remaining by the time that expiry comes around on Tuesday. New lows were recorded during the final moments as selling appeared to create some pre-weekend negative sentiment, sending Oct’24 out at $542.40.
