CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
Early Morning Update - April 4, 2024
By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago
Class III and Cheese futures continued their slump for the third day this week as spot ticked lower and continued Dry Whey futures market weakness. Despite carrying a healthy premium to the current mid-$1.40 spot cheese price, Class III and Cheese both also continued to see downside momentum cool yesterday. While a good reason to rally futures is not apparent this morning, Class III and Cheese are both firm overnight and, as we mentioned in yesterday’s comment, the environment is ripe for corrective move upward (even if only short term). This assessment is driven largely by closely watching the price behavior the past few days, which reveals a market decline weakening despite having plenty of good fundamental reason to continue lower.
Trading volumes were good and heavy Wednesday with over 2,900 Class III trading. Of that, just over 1,900 changed hands in the April and May contracts alone. The May contract fell just a nickel on over 1,100 trades and open interest increased by 465 contracts as the concentration of open positions is squarely on May. Speculative interests have continually rolled short positions month by month during this bear market as the pattern of profit for them has not changed. The important word left out there is “yet”. Generally speaking, managed money will continue to do what works [to make money] until it stops working. Sometimes it stops working with a whimper. Other times with a tremendous bang of short covering. We haven’t seen anything like that in a while and as of this morning it doesn’t appear the fundamentals support and about-face by the speculative community. But we mention as reminder because orderly markets – like Class III and Cheese recently – often get lulled to sleep on such matters.
Speaking of tremendous bangs, the Butter futures market continued its breathtaking ascent yesterday with a big push to the $300.000 level. July to December finished at $301.050. Spot followed closing up 2 cents to $294.000 on 11 trades. The burst of buying cause the market to gap higher. Not entirely unusual for our less liquid markets, but technically that gap higher could turn out to be an “exhaustion gap”. Exhaustion gaps can be seen at the tops of markets and generally reflects the herd mentality at is worst. We can’t call yesterday’s gap higher an exhaustion gap yet, but it’s on our radar. When the dust settled 267 butter contracts traded and open interest rose by 235, which would suggest that new buyers AND new sellers were in the mix.
While Butter and Class IV closed higher Wednesday, NFDM slumped again following strong buying on Tuesday. New selling likely had a hand in the decline with 280 contracts trading and open interest up 178. Spot gained a penny to close at $114.000 on 1 trade. Despite the mostly weaker close for futures, the NFDM market has reached an area of sideways trading for the past week or so. Unable to make new lows, futures are called mixed around current levels today.
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CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
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