CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
Early Morning Update - March 13, 2024
By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago
Nearby Class III contract pushed to new lows yesterday amid more spot selling pressure – this time exclusively barrel market weakness (down 4 cents to 1.42). Cheese futures also sold off as market participants weight the severity of the recent price decline with the already healthy premium for nearby futures contracts. We’d imagine the low-$1.40 price level for spot cheese juxtaposed against that healthy futures premium will draw in a more aggressive spot bid soon. Also the block/barrel spread has corrected somewhat now, which is also a mild indicator that the market clearing price will now be in the low-$1.40s for a period of time. In the country, rather quiet demand mixed with buyers not wanting to “catch a falling knife” has kept orders somewhat slow recently.
All that said, Class III and Cheese futures are higher this morning. We’re reminded that the objective of the futures market is to toggle between a place where sellers no longer want to sell and then move to the place where buyers no longer want to buy. We don’t think sellers are necessarily at a place where they don’t want to sell today – mainly as evidenced by our customer phone calls so far this week – but we don’t want to rule out normal hedge buy side business that is also still on-going. July-December Cheese settled at $1.8000 yesterday. For all the immediate bearishness of the market, that $1.80 number is a big fat target for some end-users looking for coverage in the second half of the year. No doubt there is also some short-speculative profit taking here too. It’s not dramatic but there are traders out there who don’t want to overthink this market – they just want to take the money from the past week off the table.
We are expecting mixed cheese prices with blocks down a little and barrels up significantly in the NDPSR report tomorrow. We’re expecting butter, NFDM and dry whey prices to all drop. The current March Class III forecast is $16.38 (assuming spot cheese trends a little higher) and Class IV at $19.96 (assuming slightly weaker butter).
Spot butter found new buying interest after failing to break through the lows seen at the end of February. Butter traded 3 cents higher to 2.8325 as it looks to retest the multi-month highs at 2.85. Futures trading gained some momentum with 196 contracts traded as prices were higher with nearby April up 3 cents. After making lows in December at ~2.45, spot butter has been slowing shifting higher, making higher lows throughout the last few months with even more consolidation recently between 2.75-2.85.
A steady spot nonfat market did little to incentive any futures movement, even with a weaker GDT Pulse. Futures volume was bleak with only 74 contracts trading as futures were mostly unchanged. Futures activity this morning has already surpassed yesterday’s volume with the Q3 futures strip trading 19x. Outright months in that quarter have turned slightly weaker as the continue to consolidate near recent lows.
- Dairy
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CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
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