There was a wobble on the opening as March’25 dropped down to 22.20, however a swift recovery to the 22.30’s which limited the losses was crucial as longs looked to defend against this latest slide and prevent the market from falling out of the current band. Slowly but surely the market was able to continue building from this situation with the losses almost erased as we reached the middle of the session and welcomed those in the Americas to the fray. More defensive buying from longs followed during the early afternoon, small in size but sufficient to move March’25 up to 22.69 given the limited nature of producer pricing at current levels. When progress did stall there was a washout which in turn drew some day trader selling to send the price all the way back to 22.25, however the swing nature of day traders meant that prices were able to recover on buybacks to leave prices showing little net change moving through the final hour. The one negative to be taken from the performance was the performance of the March/May’25 spread which registered successive daily losses with a drop to 1.51 points intra-day before ending at 1.55 points, though this remains a strong premium. There was some selling for the call which led to a mildly lower close for March’25, though with positions from Jul’25 forward showing net gains the overall situation is unchanged for the coming days.
An initial wobble saw Dec’24 trading near to initial support with prints at $565.00 on the opening, but this was gathered up and the market settled down to minimise the losses and be holding in the upper $560’s. This provided the basis to try and work higher and though it took a while to get going the market was back into a solid credit by the end of the morning, aided particularly by the front month spreads. Here the Dec’24/March’25 was shrugging off its recent weakness and showing gains of around $3, and while volume wasn’t that big the impetus was solely from the long side and so kept the value firm. Through the centre of the day this situation maintained with the market holding comfortably in the lower/mid $570’s, and even when some corrective action arrived it did not do much to dent the spread or white premium progress which saw March/March’25 back to the $85 area. Having eased to $568.50 the market launched back up during the final couple of hours to highs at $582.40, maintaining the pattern of recent days with yet another move through the recent range. It could not sustain this level through to the close as some late liquidation sent Dec’24 back through the $570’s, ending the day to the centre of the range at $575.10 and leaving parameters unchanged for another session.
