CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
Early Morning Update - August 12, 2024
By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago
Futures markets, generally, want to get to a place where buyers and sellers come together and hash it out with relative stability to price. This is how we’d describe Thursday and Friday’s trade for Class III and Cheese futures. September Class III, for example, gained just over $1,00/cwt on Tuesday and Wednesday only to trade in a roughly 30 cent trading range on Thursday and Friday. This consolidation is a pause in market action - for lack of a better descriptor – and it normally reveals a slowdown in overall trading volumes. Just 957 Class III contracts changed hands on Friday (301 Cheese futures).
Perhaps we can chalk up some of the diminished volume to the annual Idaho Milk Processors Association meeting in Sun Valley Idaho, which presumably helped shift attention away from Class III and onto the beautiful greens at the Sun Valley Golf Course. Nevertheless, despite barrel cheese eclipsing the $2.00/lb. level for the first time since late June, good two-sided spot trading also likely stymied futures buy side enthusiasm and overall trade volumes. We’ve long said that the spot cheese market has more or less been remarkably stable this summer – trading largely sideways in a rather narrow price range. That may be changing now as some buyers taking a wait-and-see approach may be forced into an I-need-to-get-something-bought approach seasonally. That said, we do expect sellers to continue to bring loads for sale during the spot call – we’re just less certain they’ll bring any material weight to spot prices.
Spot Butter opened and closed unchanged with no trades on Friday but that didn’t slow market strength. Good 2024 buy side interest pushed most prices 2-4 cents higher Friday as some prices bounced off their 20-moving average. We’d suggest the end-user campaign to own butter derivative contracts is still alive and well, but its not abundantly clear that new buying was the driving force Friday. When the closing bell rang, 215 contracts had traded and open interest was up just 35 contracts – with August, September and November contracts all losing open interest during the day. The butte futures market has been remarkably stable and while we’ve heard of cream tightening up a bit, overall butter production is better this year than expected. We continue to see a good two-sided trade for spot around the $3.10 mark and there is little apparent reason for such a solid price rally on Friday to us this morning.
NFDM was lower Friday along with spot NDFM, which fell 1.75 cents on 1 trade with a bid and 3 offers left on the board. The spot market’s pop above the 18-month high of $1.24 was short-lived as the trade continues move product in the low-$1.20s. This dynamic will likely foster some bearish ideas of a failure by the market price to sustain that new 18-month high and move higher. That is a reasonable assessment, but fundamentally we’re not expecting a great deal of weakness from current levels. The market is likely able to continue to clear product around current levels and we’ll be watching for any sign of deviation from that more sideways price direction.
- Dairy
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CME Cash Market Summary
Daily CME spot dairy market price summary
Dairy Team - Chicago
- Dairy
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