CaliforniaCarbon.Info 13th Aug, 2018: 

A brief overview of market activity: California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) prices continue to show stability with minor movements along the curve. Trades and OI are defying normal downward trend during pre-auction session, having significantly increased over the last week. There is noticeably a significant hike in both trades and open interest under Sep18 which is the next post-auction delivery.

CCA Prices: Prices have not seen any drastic hikes or dips recently with narrow margin of movement for the last month. CCAs are keeping to trend this week with certain deliveries dropping a cent at most. Intraday volatility was high on the last day week with certain deliveries dropping a cent (V18 Nov18, V18 Dec18, V18 Jan19) while certain future deliveries gaining anywhere from 2-cents to 6-cents. As of Friday (08/10) front (V18 Aug18) was trading at US$ 15.14 and benchmark (V18 Dec18) was trading US$ 15.31, marking a 4-cent and 2-cent gain respectively. See CCA tracker below to follow daily price movements:

Volume: Volumes totaled up to 9,834,000 tons which almost a 3.2 million ton increase in volume over a week. While the general trend is for trades to go down over pre-auction session, the significant increase, noticeably under the Dec19 delivery indicates that there have been significant movement of trades from short-term to the long-term. Trades under Dec19 roundup to be 4.4 million tons while Sep18 registered around 2.7 million and Dec18 trades totaled up to 2,558,000 tons. Aug18 delivery saw minor trades at 26,000 tons. Vintage-wise trades were concentrated under V2018 with 7.7 million tons making up 77.87% of the total while V2019 had the second highest trades this week with 1.05 million tons.

Open Interest: There has been a huge uptick in OI contracts when compared to last week. Around 4.5 million OI contracts were added to the market with Dec19 and Sep18 making up significant number of those additions. V18 Sep18 saw an added 2,525,000 tons of OI contracts and Dec19 saw 2.9 million OI contracts added. V18 Dec18 was the sole delivery that saw closure of about 979,000 OI contracts.

Analyst contact: Abhilasha Fullonton (abhilasha.fullonton@californiacarbon.info)