March closed the day higher by $.028 for the first time after nine consecutive lower daily closes since the reversal following the failed trend line violation on February 3rd. Since February expiration March has closed lower in all but three days of its tenure as prompt. This past week, on the 8th day of those nine straight lower closes March traded into the historical support zone that has been defined as $1.50 – $1.60, trading into that zone for the next two trading days, trading as low as $1.573 closing below $1.60 once.
The daily ATR (essentially the average daily trading range for the last fifteen days) has fallen from $.312…the highest calculation since 02/02/23, to $143. This is the lowest calculation since 12/11/23 ($.133), two days before the beginning of the rally that 18 trading days later resulted in the January high ($2.235 – $3.392). While March has been the prompt contract total open interest has increased more than 140,000 contracts (the total number of contracts outstanding had already increased more than 117,000 contracts from 12/26 to 01/30). Together those increases (257,216 contracts) bring the total of contracts outstanding to 1,611,826, the highest total since 10/19/18 which was just before an extension of the Q4 ’18 rally from $3.102 to$4.929 that took just thirteen trading days.
