It was a “wow” opening for No.11 as initial higher prints encouraged buying to flood straight in with March’25 recording gains of more than 50 points during the first 15 minutes and continuing up to 22.86 (+82) with barely half an hour having passed. A period spent up around the highs ended with a retreat into the range with the scale of the early gains unsustainable, and while only based on profit taking / position trimming it had the effect of restricting the March’24 contract to the early range for the next few hours. Alongside this there was some wild activity being seen for the Oct’24/March’25 spread with aggressive buying / rolling continuing yesterday’s recovery and taking the value up sharply to a 0.29-point premium, a 40-point gain on the morning. By the early afternoon this buying had completed, and the spread had fallen back towards parity, while the flat price was also maintaining calm within the range as the spec / fund buying which has been occurring each afternoon was held back. This may indicate that the community feel they have added sufficient longs for now given the reasons for the rally are merely “mildly bullish”, though the full extent of their activity will remain hard to gauge for a while as tonight’s COT report will simply point back to Tuesday when the market stood over 200 points lower. The reticence on the part of the specs lifted during the later afternoon and there was a push on strong volume which led the market to 22.90, providing yet another opportunity for producers to price despite the rest of the board being unable to match the scale of the March’25 performance. Session highs were then registered at 22.92 ahead of the close though a good deal of pre-weekend selling then emerged to leave settlement back at 22.74, while Oct’24/March’25 had slipped back to a small discount at -0.08 points. This cemented a very strong weekly performance which leaves the chart looking strong, though such has been the rate of progress that a pause may be on the horizon unless the funds want to grow their holding to a size not seen in the past couple of years.
With No.11 already trading higher there was a gap opening for Dec’24 as buying chased in, immediately breaking above $574.90 to encourage the longs and maintained through the first hour as the price soared to stand almost $20 higher at $588.50. Such a rate of progress is not sustainable and so a pause to take stock and allow for some position unwinding to occur was no bad thing, with values gradually softening back into the range through the rest of the morning as a result. Across recent days the greater progress has been achieved during the afternoon with the help of US specs, but this morning’s activities had rewritten the script somewhat and instead of pushing back up the market continued within an extended phase of sideways consolidation. Marginal new session lows were registered at $574.70 as the market partially filled the early gap and tested support at the former high, but the mood remained positive, and the price action then started to move upward again. With the final hour approaching there was a fresh burst of activity which quickly moved values to new daily highs at $590.30 as traders looked to maximise the gains ahead of the weekend. The technical strength generated earlier in the day had provided a boost to white premium values which saw March/March’25 trading above $90 intra-day, however the differences in outlook between refined and raw sugar remains apparent and these gains were not fully maintained as the value returned to $86.50 late in the afternoon. The market eased back from the highs during the final hour and posted a close for Dec’24 at $584.90, concluding another strong showing which may yet lead the price to look at $600 before the current fund push eases.
