Robusta coffee futures in London posted losses of more than two percent on Friday as speculative selling erased the gains made on Wednesday, dealers said. Liffe benchmark March settled at $721 a tonne, down 2.6 percent after a $720-736 range on turnover of 1,697 lots. May pulled in volume of 1,697 lots and lost 2.4 percent to close at $747 after a 745-763 range.
A total of 6,062 lots traded on the Liffe coffee market.
Another trader attributed some of the downturn to profit-taking ahead of a long weekend in the United States. The NYBOT commodity markets will be closed on Monday, January 17 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Robusta had opened down after a slow performance on Thursday, when it settled unchanged despite two percent gains in New York.
The fall steepened on Friday afternoon when the New York Board of Trade's March contract slid. The benchmark arabica position was trading down 1.2 cents at 100 cents a lb by London's close.
"There are simply not the supply concerns about robusta that there are about arabica," one trader said. "Besides, London is not subject to the same attention from funds that New York is."
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