Prices up, sellers gone?

When prices move down, buyers don't pick up the phone as quickly as they do when markets are firm. And when markets are firming we have trouble reaching our sellers, and when we do, some say they have closed their shop for a few days. For some products, we see that the market sentiment with sellers is changing fast. Buyers have found their phones and keyboard again, and sellers have put up the sign that business is done for now. The result? Very little market activity and a lot of frustrations. 

Looking at the market we have a hard time explaining the sudden change in sentiment (especially on the butter market) because looking at the export possibilities, they are still low, demand is at best steady compared to last year and production is up. Looking at the German  (up 1.5%), the French (up 0.5%) and the UK (up2.5%) milk collections we should see more products compared to the year before. Some seem to think that this is a temporary correction due to the fast pace we went down, others think the market is a bit too oversold and will bounce back up for a longer period.

The strange thing is that now we see that producers are able to sell at levels they would have been pleased to sell on last week, now all pull their offers again. This move might feel right as prices are moving up a bit. But if sellers will come back to the market at the same time (after the demand is pulling back again) we might see the same reaction from the markets as we have seen in the weeks behind us. Because fundamentally we have very few persons who disagree with us about the fact that the market is still oversupplied.