Insight Focus
Speculators have added heavily to their No.11 long positions in recent weeks and now hold a net long position of 25.1k lots. The speculative long plus short combined position is the highest we’ve ever seen. Producers added 153k lots of shorts amidst the price strength.
New York No.11 Raw Sugar Futures
No.11 raw sugar futures traded in a relatively narrow range last week, starting at 16.5c/lb on Monday and settling at 16.6c/lb on Friday after briefly reaching 16.8c/lb on Thursday. This followed the stunning rally of the week prior, which lifted the market to 2026 highs.
The most recent CFTC data covers the period of that rally. Speculators opened 59.7k lots of long positions and reduced their short position by 57.2k lots. This resulted in the biggest one-week change in the net speculative position that we have ever seen.
No.11 Commitment of Traders Report (August 11, 2026)
The current speculative net long position stands at 25,057 lots.
On the commercial side, end-users reduced their long position by 4.4k lots of longs, whilst producers added 153k lots of shorts. The scale of this producer hedging was also far in excess of anything we’ve ever seen.
No.11 & No.5 Open interest
Open interest increased in several No.11 and No.5 contracts last week, particularly at the front of both curves. No.11 futures prices strengthened slightly, while the No.5 curve strengthened more noticeably.
White Premium (Arbitrage)
The V/V white premium rose from around USD 143/tonne on Monday, hit a high of USD 147.1 on Thursday and eventually settled at USD 145.2/tonne on Friday.
For a more detailed view of the sugar futures and market data, please refer to the appendix below.
No.11 (Raw Sugar) Appendix
No.5 (White Sugar) Appendix
White Premium Appendix
