NEW YORK/LONDON: Arabica coffee futures on ICE sank more than 4 percent on Tuesday, briefly triggering a circuit breaker, while Liffe robusta coffee hit the lowest level in nearly three months, on sell signals after dropping below technical levels.
Cocoa futures climbed to four month highs as the charts remained bullish, with both ICE Futures US and Liffe markets later paring gains. Sugar was little changed.
ICE July arabica coffee futures closed down 5.55 cents, or 3.9 percent, at $1.3755 per lb, having earlier dipped 4.6 percent to $1.3655. The contract had reached $1.3355 on April 15, the lowest level for the second month since May 2010.
The tumble triggered a form of temporary circuit breaker called an interval price limit, at approximately 9:48 a.m. EDT (1348 GMT), an ICE spokeswoman said.
July arabica tumbled 4.15 cents in 60 seconds, on a volume surge of 1,442 lots, ICE data showed.
When the July contract quickly moved 400 points within 15 seconds, it entered a 30-second hold period, during which time trades outside of this range could not be conducted. This is to protect the market from price spikes during an exceptionally short period of time typically caused, in part, by cascading stop orders.
The market turned lower after origin selling prevented prices from reaching new highs, and the downward move was exacerbated by sell-stops being triggered after July arabica fell below its 40-day moving average at $1.3935, dealers said.
<Center><b><i>Copyright Reuters, 2013</b></i><br></center>
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