Daily Market Price Updates and Commentary 15th April 2025

Raw Sugar Update

It was another calm start to trading with this week seeing reduced macro volatility, and the early part of the session saw Jul’25 little changed within a narrow band. The only current feature for the market is the technical vulnerability and as the morning progressed so we saw traders probing from the short side to explore down towards 17.55 in the hope of triggering stops / bringing in fresh selling. An early afternoon effort saw this former low broken without any kind of reaction, but while some short covering followed this set off a trend of lower lows and lower highs throughout the afternoon as their continued probing had the desired effect. Across several hours the price quietly descended to 17.40 and in the process pulled May’25 down into the 17.50’s ahead of the option expiry. Jul’25 continued to probe away at the lower end of the range through the final couple of hours, filling in some assorted end user / consumer hedging interest on the way to a session low 17.39 during the last hour. This paved the way for a settlement at 17.41 which will encourage the shorts and potentially draw in additional chart-based selling for the near term while other news / factors remain lacking. May’25 meanwhile saw lows at 17.51 late on and settled at 17.52 as the options expire. 

White Sugar Update

Though Aug’25 started the day by trading a little firmer it was a muted environment and there appeared little desire to try and break back above the psychological $500 mark and generate more buying. Instead, the stalemate gave way to renewed selling before the morning was through with Aug’25 reaching $495.60 to sit within a dollar of the early March low and heap more pressure onto the market as smaller traders and specs sensed the opportunity to push lower. It was early afternoon before this price level cracked with the resultant selling sending Aug’25 back to $489.60 across the next couple of hours before easing and enabling values to try and hold. The pressure had an impact upon the white premium values with Aug/Jul’25 falling back towards $105.50 intra-day and further adding to the negative sentiment. Volume was steady for Aug’25 as the flat price levelled out in the low $490’s through the rest of the afternoon, though the rest of the board was seeing little and so increasingly the focus turned to the May’25 expiry. Here there was very little volume with only some light spread activity to show for the day, the final position tweaking taking place ahead of a small tender with todays starting OI of 1,826 lots unlikely to change by much. Aug’25 remained within proximity of the lows when the call finally arrived and settled at $490.10 to conclude another negative performance.  May’25 has seen 1,393 lots (69,650mt) tendered against the tape this evening. Details of origin are currently limited, with full details available from the exchange tomorrow morning.