Sugar #11 Mar ’22
An unchanged opening soon gave way to some light selling, though with little to follow it up the market then entered into a morning of quiet consolidation. The sharp recovery has stalled in the face of technical resistance between 18.46/18.52 though that did not deter day traders from pushing back up to new daily highs to have another investigation as to whether the area could be breeched. A prolonged period was spent probing the low 18.40’s through the late morning/early afternoon but the buyers lacked the necessary volume to further probe the scale selling and with the macro showing weakness the buyers threw in the towel with the resultant long liquidation sending prices down to fresh session lows. As with the recovery, the market lacks depth within the recent range and so on only moderate volume the downward momentum gathered, eventually running some sell stops as a low was recorded at 17.94. Worryingly for the bulls there was also selling appearing again for the nearby spreads with March/May’22 back into 0.20 points, and while the flat price stabilised back above 18c the positive sentiment had diminished. Closing activity remained at the lower end of the range and left March’22 settling down at 18.09, by no means catastrophic and maybe suggesting consolidation either side of 18c for the short term as things look to calm a little.
Sugar #5 Mar’22
The whites have seen an astronomical recovery over the past two sessions however there was no sign of the buying that has generated this move when we opened today as March’22 slumped all the way to $495.10 within the first 20 minutes of trading. This caused the March’22 white premium to slide all the way back to $93 however the losses soon started to be recovered as buyers emerged to push back above %400 where the situation was able to calm for a while. The recovery gave fresh encouragement that the upward move could continue and as buyers returned so March’22 pushed to $504.60 to be just shy of yesterdays’ highs, and in the process pulled the March’22 white premium back to $99. The efforts were admirable however there was simply not the follow-on volume required to maintain the push and with commodities generally under pressure so long liquidation crept in which sent prices falling over a couple of hours to reach $495.30 and mark a double bottom on the intra-day chart. This proved to be the low point and calmer trading over the final couple of hours saw the market play out at the bottom of the range to settle at $497.30. Overall, it was merely an interesting inside day which concluded lower despite the spreads and premiums holding largely firm. This represents something of a contradiction and shows that the whites are broadly supportive, though with No.11 not seeing the same positivity the more likely near-term option may be to settle into the range for some calmer consolidation.