There was mixed activity during the first hour with prices edging either side of unchanged levels before levelling out just ahead of 19.00 to consolidate through the later morning. Fridays COT had shown the expected modest reduction in the net speculative long position to 202,310 lots long (-21,281 lots) though action over the second half of last week suggests that the live position is lower than this with selling seen throughout the three sessions. There were solid gains being made across the commodity macro, led by the energy sector, though these were still being largely disregarded as the price action continued sideways for several hours, quietly working through into the afternoon. The picture changed midway through the afternoon with a short burst of spec buying taking March’23 into the 19.20’s before slipping back in a sign that the macro was having some small impact on day trader sentiment although with the underling consumer buying not following suit the gains proved tricky to maintain. This pattern continued through the final couple of hours with successive efforts to lift prices back up meeting with failure, the final one heading into the close seeing a new high at 19.28 before making settlement at 19.17 against long liquidation. Overall, the longs will be boosted by the fact that the decline has been halted, though with trade/consumer participants currently content to remain scale down buyers there will be plenty more work to be done by the specs if they wish to reverse the decline.
The week started positively with end user pricing seen to the front of the board and this enabled prices to claw back a small portion of the recent losses during early trading. The recovery topped out in the region of $535.00 with buying then easing up, though with the wider macro once again enjoying a positive performance there was only a moderate pullback with spec sellers deterred from further long liquidation. There was no discernible change to the pattern of trading as the US spec community joined the fray, but as the afternoon progressed things did pick up with March’23 pushing to new highs, aided in no small way by spread buying with March/May’23 widening all the way back to $19.10. March/March’23 white premium also saw a significant recovery to trade beyond $115.00 though gains were more modest across the rest of the board with May/May’23 topping out just above $120.00 and Aug/Jul’23 at 117.50. Daily highs were recorded at $538.80 before against pausing, and though efforts were made by specs to hold prices at the top of the range ahead of the close we ended the day a small way back at $535.50, a positive conclusion as longs looks to stem the decline and prevent further price falls.
