One market moved almost ten per cent on Friday and it was not copper, wheat or crude. Below, the five questions the tape asked, answered in the order they mattered.
Sugar rose 9.9 per cent in a session. On what?
Raw sugar #11 settled at 16.49 US cents a pound, up from 15.01, which puts the flat price at 364 USD per tonne. No single supply headline in the day's traffic carries that move on its own, which usually means positioning rather than a cargo. The physical backdrop is worth holding next to it: in Kenya, a group of cane suppliers has gone to court over 173.58 million shillings of unpaid dues, and in India the payment picture is split, with Wave Sugar at Dhanaura clearing 474.66 crore rupees for the full crushing season while farmers in Dharashiv marched on the collector's office over seven months of arrears from a cooperative mill. A market where the mills cannot pay the growers is a market that will not add cane quickly at 16 cents.
Is nitrogen following sulphur, or the other way round?
Urea gained 3.1 per cent to 400 USD per tonne and Chinese sulphur added 1.8 per cent to 9,535.67 yuan, or 1,413 USD per tonne, on the same day. DAP did not move at all, holding at 792.5. That combination squeezes the phosphate producer from both ends, since sulphur and ammonia are the two things he buys and DAP is the one thing he sells. Nutrien's second quarter, reported this week with nitrogen margins dragging on adjusted earnings, tells the producer half of the story. In Delhi, opposition MPs are pressing the centre to reverse the cut to the DAP subsidy, which is the buyer half.
Why is wheat falling while Odesa burns?
Chicago wheat lost 1.7 per cent to 639.75 cents a bushel, 235 USD per tonne, a third consecutive weekly loss, and it did so in a week when Bloomberg's read of the damage put Ukrainian grain exports 54 per cent lower this season on port strikes and drought. The answer is substitution: Russian supply is filling the gaps that Ukrainian supply vacates, and the Kazakh trade is the tell, with Moscow's agriculture ministry reporting wheat shipments to Kazakhstan up six and a half times. Buyers are being asked to pay a war premium for a commodity that keeps arriving.
Does the Hormuz mine story change the Gulf freight math?
Iran is weighing whether to let European navies clear mines from the strait, which is the first constructive line out of that channel in weeks and the one that matters most to anyone lifting sulphur, urea or ammonia from Ras Laffan, Ruwais or Jubail. Brent barely acknowledged it, easing 0.3 per cent to 83.55 a barrel, and ULSD held at 3.902 a gallon, 1,221 USD per tonne, with US diesel refining economics still firm after the truce. Insurers move slower than futures. War-risk quotes on Gulf loadings will lag any clearance by weeks.
What does Zambia's Thursday do to the metal?
Copper on COMEX printed 6.591 dollars a pound, 14,531 USD per tonne, a six-month high built on the Congolese ban on concentrate exports. Zambia votes on 13 August, with the vice-president this week asking the clergy to pray for a peaceful poll and the police chief under editorial fire over campaign violence. Chile, meanwhile, banked the price: July copper export revenue rose 22.7 per cent year on year and the trade surplus came in at 1.99 billion dollars.
One more from the freight desk: Mitsui O.S.K. told its first-quarter call it expects Capesize demand to stay strong, while the Baltic Dry sat unchanged at 3,057. Palm oil added 0.5 per cent to 4,677 ringgit, 1,144 USD per tonne, ahead of the July MPOB numbers, and cobalt did not trade off 56,290 USD per tonne for a second session.