CSCE coffee futures finished on Monday with moderate gains on light roaster buying, but volume remained exceptionally light with many players still skittish after last on Wednesday's sharp selloff, traders said.
"The market was very quiet. More consolidation after last week's first notice day (for May coffee futures). The roasters were providing scaledown support. Origins were sidelined. There was a little bit of short-term spec selling," a dealer said.
Newly most-active July coffee closed 0.10 cent higher at 70.55 cents, and traded from 70.00 to 71.00 cents.
May Arabic rose 0.10 cent to end at 68.05 cents a lb., and set a 67.90 to 68.40 cents range.
The rest settled from 0.10 to 0.20 cents higher.
Final estimated coffee volume was 5,571 lots, below the paltry 7,084 trades on Friday and considerably less than the near record volume of 40,086 lots on Wednesday.
Open interest in coffee rose by 132 lots to 93,463 lots as of April 23. On Monday's coffee call volume was 1,762 lots, with puts at 1,077 lots.
Traders said many players remain cautious about getting back into the market after the steep declines that led coffee futures to a 3-1/2 month low on Wednesday.
Though mild of late, one trader said he thought weather factors may have start to have more of an influence on prices.
"We're going into a year when seasonally factors will start to kick in and you'll see some protective frost trades start to be initiated that could push the price up a little bit," the traders said.
Technical analysts said support in July now rests at Thursday's low of 69.30 cents a lb., with resistance at 71.70 and 73.80 cents. New York coffee delivery notices at April 26 totalled 261, with a cumulative tally of 1,584 since first notice day in May coffee futures last on Thursday.
Traders said the market continues to wait for this week's release of the Brazil's latest official crop figures.
Favourable weather has prompted analysts to raise output forecasts for top producer Brazil to between 40 to 45 million 60-kg bags. Brazil had forecast coffee output at 35.8 million bags last December.
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