US cocoa futures contracts ended lower on Monday and the market sought direction after sterling eased against the dollar following its rise to 14-year highs last week, floor traders said.
"I think without the spec participation that we saw last week we didn't see any follow through on the upside so basically people were just re-evaluating," one trader said. Speculative profit-taking and fund liquidation provided additional pressure, traders said. The NYBOT cocoa contract for benchmark March cocoa futures contract moved down $7 per tonne to settle at $1,556 per tonne, ranging from $1,543 to $1,567.
May fell $8 to $1,578, trading between $1,565 and $1,587. The rest fell $7 to $8. Estimated trading volume near the close was 7,044 lots, down sharply from the previous official tally at 13,580 lots. In London, cocoa futures closed easier on trade and producer selling against industry buying, traders said.
London's December cocoa finished down 4 pounds at 811 pounds a tonne, after trading from 808 to 818 pounds. March finished down 3 pounds to 839 pounds. Rains were patchy across Ivory Coast's cocoa-growing regions last week, farmers said on Monday, while in the key Dale and Sombre areas growers said they had seen no precipitation to ease a weeks-long dry spell.
Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer. Cocoa arrivals at Ivories ports from October 1 to December 3 reached around 348,000 tonnes, compared with 414,842 tonnes delivered in the same period last year, exporters estimated on Monday.
In a rough weekly estimate, shippers reckoned up to 60,000 tonnes of beans were delivered to ports in the week of November 27-December 3. This would be less than the previous week's 64,544 tonnes, the largest amount seen in any single week this season.
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