Today was the first preview of first notices, so it was effectively the last “normal” trading day for the March contract, seeing as though all delivery positions were being cleaned up ahead of notices.
The March has had a galloping good time of late, peaking out around 230 over the May, trading around 2 cents over the May for much of the last two sessions including today.
The electronic session saw the March and the May contracts trading around 30 lower going into the open outcry session. The open outcry saw some widespread hedge fund selling early on, however this ramped up after the re-opening to push the March all the way back to 54 cents, and will little bid volume, the March soon wobbled down towards 53.50, eventually catching some commercial bids around the 53.35 area.
The outside markets had a lot of strength in the second half of the session, with grains leading the way with contract highs in the spot corn and Soy contracts. Metals and energies were also up strongly, which had a flow on effect into cotton, and soon March was trading unchanged, having been 130 lower just 30 minutes earlier.
There was a noticeable amount of late commercial price fixing in the March to send it off strongly, before a little profit taking in the remaining e-session. Estimated volume today was sizeable at 33,425 lots.
This morning's spec hedge report was actually shorter than last week despite large fund liquidation of March positions last week. It seems that funds were liquidating longs and shorts last week, with their overall position now 8.7% net short.
marketing@alchempro.com
