US cocoa futures finished in negative territory in quiet business on Monday on some light speculative pressure as the market digested last week's run-up to two-month highs and monitored renewed tensions in leading grower Ivory Coast, market sources said. "The volume was just 5,073 lots, so there was nothing really going on down here today just some speculative business," said one floor dealer.
The New York Board of Trade's front-month July contract lost $11 to settle at its session low at $1,523 a tonne, after hitting a higher of $1,542 in the day.
Most-active September cocoa closed down $13 at $1,531 a tonne, just off the bottom of its $1,530 to $1,555 trading band, while back months ended $13 to $15 weaker.
Cocoa futures started the session flat and proceeded to trade on either side of unchanged before speculators sold the market on a lack of follow-through buying.
"We just consolidated today from last week's rally," said one dealer. Last week, the cocoa market rebounded from 11-month lows on a bout of short covering and fund buying, mainly attributed to a combination of dollar weakness, positive technical signals and renewed doubts about a peace process between civil war foes in No 1 cocoa producer Ivory Coast.
Over the weekend, Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo bolstered the country's military presence in the troubled west and in the main city of Abidjan on Friday, saying he wanted to ensure elections could go ahead as planned in October.
"This just shows that you really don't want to be short this market due to political uncertainties in Ivory Coast," said a cocoa broker.
In other news, the latest weekly Commitments of Traders data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed the net speculative position in NYBOT cocoa turned long by 3,434 contracts as of June 14, compared with 953 contracts net short on June 7.
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