Futures were wanted on the open and found good support early and reached buy stops and went all the way to 55.50 based H'07 before the heavy trade selling put a top on the move.
There were some locals who had gotten long at the lows on Wednesday below 54.50 c/lb and they began to take profits when the market ran into trade selling and the market fell back to 55.00 cents even for most of the day until it found a bit of buying on the close.
The trading volume was above average with an estimated 15,000 futures and 5,000 contracts in options. Grains were up strong across the board today as gold and oil fell slightly.
The funds seem happy to continue to test the highs and look for opportunities to add to their long position. Export sales today were friendly with 337,400 b/c with almost 180,000 b/c going to Mexico.
China and Turkey remained buyers of the average quantity so it is hard to get too excited that demand is showing up at these levels in NY. These sales to Mexico were most likely on-call sales throughout the calendar year 2007, so they are not as friendly as fixed price sales into the Far East or Turkey.
On top of that shipments were even lower than last week at 132,400 b/c which is way below where we need in order to reach the level estimated by the USDA. Domestic consumption also fell today compared to last month and continues to look like we will see cuts in the domestic USDA consumption number as well.
Technically today the market made a very solid close and case for going higher. Settling above the 100 day moving average at 55.03 was very positive as well as the close at 55.37 setting the highest closing level on the H'07 since September 27.
marketing@alchempro.com
