20000331

CSCE sugar closes almost flat after see-saw trade

NEW YORK: CSCE raw sugar futures ended Wednesday almost unchanged as trade and commission house buying offset modest fund selling amid general consolidation following the recent failure at upside targets.

May sugar inched up a miserly 0.01 to settle at 5.42 cents a lb, trading 5.44-5.28 cents.

July finished steady at 5.42 cents and October gained 0.02 to 5.78 cents. The rest were either 0.01 up or 0.01 cent easier at the end of business.

Origin pricing from unchanged and speculative pressure into stops dragged the market down shortly after the start, quickly pushing benchmark May to its session low, floor sources said.

But sugar ran into trade support, with Cargill said to be a noted buyer, and the market bounced back to near unchanged levels, they said.

"It (the trade buying) was enough to turn the market around," James Cordier, broker for Liberty Trading Group, said, adding follow-through activity on Thursday may allow May to again move past 5.50 cents.

One veteran physical broker said benchmark sugar prices appear to be range-bound between 5.20 and 5.50 cents, basis May, and will likely linger there for the meantime.

"We need to get closer to expiration (of the May contract) to see what quantities are available for delivery," he said.

Front May goes off the board on April 28.

Cordier said a close above 5.50 cents in May would augur well for a further advance in sugar prices, although several brokers said the market will face stiff resistance from origins primarily responsible for its failure to run past the Tuesday peak of 5.57 cents.

In an expected but bearish bit of industry news, Russia has officially published a government resolution on Wednesday setting a special 10 percent duty on raw sugar imports on top of the existing 5.00 percent.

The duty goes into effect one month after the date of publication and will remain in effect until June 14.

Another measure top importer Russia is planning to adopt is setting a 45 percent seasonal import tariff on raw sugar from June 15 to December 15 to curb imports during the sugar beet harvesting season.

Technicians said resistance in the May raw sugar contract should be seen at 5.50, 5.57 and then the overhead gap of 5.62-5.65 cents. Beyond that, the area of 5.70 cents beckon.

Support is likely at the 20-day moving average of 5.24 and then 5.20 cents.

Estimated final volume reached 21,917 lots, against the previous estimated volume of 36,843 lots.

The CSCE is a subsidiary of the New York Board of Trade. -Reuters