Raw sugar futures closed lower Wednesday in quiet range-bound trade and the market is seen staying in a band due to a lack of leads, brokers said. The New York Board of Trade's March raw sugar contract shed 0.05 cent to end at 11.32 cents per lb, dealing from 11.24 to 11.43 cents. May lost 0.08 to 11.22 cents.
The rest slipped 0.06 to 0.08 cent. "The market is stuck. Unless an external factor comes in to really drive this thing up or down, we're not really going anywhere," a financial house dealer said. The trader added that most of the running in the pit was done by players doing spread activity by buying the spot month and selling the back months.
Fundamentally, the market is digesting news from several analysts that prices will likely range between 10 and 12 cents over the next few months and then may suffer once the main center-south Brazilian cane harvest gets underway. Futures opened at its low for the day, edged up on speculative buying and spread trade and then eased to unchanged going into the close of business, traders said.
"There's not really a whole lot you can say about it. It's been a real quiet market," one said. Technicians feel support for the March contract was at 11.15 and then 11 cents, with resistance at 11.50, 11.62 and the region around 12 cents.
Volume before the close stood at 30,884 lots, from the prior count of 59,182 lots. Call volume amounted to 9,332 lots and puts hit 5,213 lots. Open interest in the No 11 raw sugar market jumped 4,918 to 564,627 lots as of December 12. No deals were done in the ethanol market.
US domestic sugar prices ended lower. The March contract fell 0.12 to 19.45 cents per lb and May lost the same to 19.50 cents. The rest were flat to 0.10 cent easier. Trades before the end reached around 39 lots, from the previous count of 208 lots.
Comments
Comments are closed.