Arabica coffee futures finished a choppy session on Tuesday in negative territory, with producer selling outweighing early speculative buying, traders said. "There was a little bit of spec buying early and some origin selling at the upper end of the range," said one trader at a brokerage in New York. "There was a fair amount of spread trading, with locals dominating activity," he added, referring to floor brokers at the New York Board of Trade.
NYBOT front-month May arabica slipped 0.30 cent to settle at $1.2205 per lb after trading from $1.2135 to $1.2330.
July slipped 0.25 to $1.2480 cents and the back months dipped 0.25 to 1.35 cents.
One floor broker said estimated trading volume amounted to 13,716 contracts, down from Monday's official tally of 14,184 lots.
Meanwhile, top coffee grower Brazil's bean exports are on track to reach a targeted 23 million 60-kg bags in 2005, down from 26.4 million bags last year, said an official at the Council of Green Coffee Exporters of Brazil.
"It will be a much smaller harvest this year and we don't expect the port congestion and container shortages we had last year," said the council's director general, Guilherme Braga, at an international coffee conference in Rio.
The expected decline in exports falls in line with projections of a smaller 2005/06 Brazilian coffee crop. The Brazilian government has forecast a 17-percent drop in the country's harvest this year due to a downturn in the biennial crop cycle.
Traders said the market appeared to be consolidating following recent big swings due to managed-money investors moving money in and out of the commodities markets.
In London, Liffe's robusta futures finished up more than 3 percent on steady trade buying. Despite the move, traders there said an 8.7 magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Monday had not yet made an impression on robusta prices.
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