The board today. Butter opened higher and stayed there, with two loads lifted above the mark before ten. Gouda 48+ did nothing at all, which is its own kind of signal after last week. Cream is the one to watch: offers thinned out through the afternoon and nobody replaced them. The buy side is still working to the old level and the sell side has stopped meeting it, so the gap you see on the screen is wider than the gap in the room.

The board today. A quiet start, then a run of mozzarella bids just before noon that cleared most of the standing offers. Whey powder came off on thin volume, which is less a move than an absence of buyers. Butter held where it closed yesterday and nobody tested it in either direction. What I take from the session is depth rather than direction: the offers that went came back within the hour, and that only happens when the sellers are comfortable.

The board today. Two loads cleared under the mark and the offer side rebuilt within the hour, which tells you more about depth than the price does. Nothing in the fundamentals moved enough to explain the back end softening. Cheese was quiet all session and the powder side did the work. I would not read a trend into one afternoon, but the last three sessions have all looked like this one, and at some point that stops being noise.