Raw sugar futures settled mixed on Tuesday as producer and speculative sales pushed nearby contracts lower, with many players already peeling away for the long US Thanksgiving holiday weekend, brokers said. The New York Board of Trade's key March raw sugar contract slipped 0.02 cent to finish at 8.86 cents a lb, moving from 8.82 to 8.89 cents. May eased 0.01 to 9.00 cents and, one contract aside, the rest rose 0.01 to 0.05 cent?
"The market's just floating around here," a senior investment house dealer said. "There's no reason to expect anything tomorrow with the holidays coming up." The raw sugar market will be shut on Thursday and Friday for US Thanksgiving.
Trading resumes on Monday, November 29. While most analysts expect to see a deficit in 2004/05, they said high freight rates are weighing on consumer buying and this could keep values in a tight band coming out of the holidays.
Sugar opened at its highs for the day and saw gradual erosion in values from Brazilian and Thai sales. The small speculators pressed the market down to its lows, from which it managed a small rebound on speculative buying, dealers said.
"The producers really kept a lid on it at 8.90 (cents, basis March)," one explained. Technicians put support in the March contract at 8.55 and 8.49 cents with resistance in the region of 8.90/93 followed by 9.00 cents.
Traded volume before the market closed hit 10,986 lots, down from Monday's tally of 27,436 lots. Call volume was 1,715 lots while puts hit 1,519 lots. Open interest in the No 11 sugar market shot up 5,846 contracts to 305,744 lots as of November 22.
Ethanol futures finished unchanged, with the November contract at 104 cents a gallon. US domestic sugar prices closed mixed. January slipped 0.03 cent to 20.45 cents a lb and March eased 0.01 to 20.48 cents.
Three contracts aside, the rest settled unchanged. Traded volume before the market's business ended for the day hit 726 lots versus the prior tally of 555 lots.
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