Daily Market Price Updates and Commentary 21st March 2025

Despite ending yesterday’s session positively, we saw May’25 trading back down to the 19.80’s upon resumption to leave the market back in limbo and disappoint the smaller traders who have been endeavoring to force new highs. Conversation around crops in Thailand and India continues to have a positive leaning but this alone has been insufficient to maintain prices above 20c throughout this week, with the same pattern being seen again and again. Through the morning May’25 see-sawed around within the early range, though some hope did return for the longs entering the afternoon as buying from the US bolstered the picture and moved May’25 to 20.07. Again, though there was no continuation and so the market retreated at pace against long liquidation, leaving a picture showing a succession of highs between 20.00 and 20.09 across the week with the worrying trend for the bulls being that this is creating a ceiling. Having fallen back to the 19.80 area the market ticked along sideways while making marginal new daily lows, a picture which appeared set to generate a quiet close until more selling appeared for the final moments. This sent May’25 back to 19.69 on the call and then to 19.66 on the post, with settlement made at 19.72 as the weekend arrives with the market appearing somewhat stuck. 

There has been nothing straightforward about trading this week and May’25 threw up another surprise as yesterday’s firm close was reversed by a sharp opening drop back down to $558.30. The market was then able to gather itself at the lower levels before clambering back up to $562.60 as the morning moved on, though buying was relatively light and so the movement stalled short of overnight levels and left a cloud hanging over proceedings. Moving into the afternoon there was no reaction from US specs, leaving prices to track along sideways, all the while performing poorly in comparison to No.11 which led the white premium values to contract with May/May’25 valued down at $117.00. Eventually the lack of upside progress and general spread / arb weakness encouraged some long liquidation to the market which sent the price back down to the mid $550’s and marking a disappointing note of which to be ending the week that had promised greater strength. The situation worsened during the closing stages as additional pre-weekend selling sent the price to a low of $551.00 and in doing so generated a settlement value at $552.40. May/May’25 was valued at $117.00 going out while May/Aug’25 settled at $13.20, a weak not on which to end a week that had promised more.