European carbon fell for the first time in five sessions on Thursday, as speculative profit-taking, higher coal prices and a weaker euro weighed.

Front-year EUA futures, trading on ICE Futures Europe, ended the day at their intraday low of €7.54, losing 8 cents from Wednesday’s settlement.

Volume on the benchmark contract was moderate at around 13.8 million, with 4.8 million of that in block trades.

“We saw a bit of profit-taking today after the recent rise,” one trader said.

The Dec-15 EUAs hit a three-week high of €7.64 on Wednesday, and re-touched that level after this morning’s auction before drifting lower through the rest of the day.

The contract is still up 5% from late May’s low of €7.18, and is 8.2% higher so far in Q2.

Meanwhile, the DES ARA coal calendar-year forwards curve shifted higher on Thursday, with the front-year Calendar-2016’s gaining 45 cents to $57.95/tonne on ICE.

That, combined with a daily loss of more than 60 basis points on the euro against the dollar, helped knock roughly 15-to-30 cents – or 4-to-7% – off the German calendar-year clean dark spreads for plants with an efficiency factor of 36%, according to Carbon Pulse calculations.

The EU sold 2.918 million spot EUAs for €7.58 each earlier in the day, in an auction that cleared 2 cents above market and attracted total bids equivalent to 8.3 million units.

Germany will offload a further 3.2 million allowances on Friday, capping off a week that saw fresh supply of more than 15 million units come to market.

That number drops to just under 12 million next week, before rising back to 15 million the following week.

By Mike Szabo – mike@carbon-pulse.com