ICE arabica coffee futures changed direction and rose for the fifth straight day on Wednesday on chart-based buying after earlier profit-taking failed to push prices below a support level. Cocoa on both ICE Futures US and Liffe rose, flirting with 2-1/2-year highs ahead of quarterly grind data, due on Thursday and expected to show a moderate rise in demand.
Sugar futures dropped, but remained rangebound. Volume was heavy in the ICE softs contracts as index funds rolled out of May contracts into July. The benchmark May arabica coffee contract on ICE Futures US ended up 3.35 cents, or 1.7 percent, at $1.9985 cents per lb, after trading widely from $1.9015-$2.0025. "The seesaw movements seen in coffee are mostly triggered by speculative activity," said Birgit Wippler, soft commodities analyst with F.O. Licht.
Investors' liquidation of long positions initially took the front-month arabica futures contract near strong support at $1.90, but failure to fall below this level attracted speculative buying. This turned the market higher for the fifth straight day, when it has gained 15 percent.
Brazil's top coffee-producing state will likely stay mostly dry this week, Somar Meteorologists said in a weather bulletin on Wednesday, though a cold front should reach the southern tipof the growing region this weekend. The return of dry weather in Brazil follows a record hot January and February, which drove front-month coffee prices to a two-year high of $2.0755 on March 11. July robusta coffee futures on Liffe remained weak, and closed down $33, or 1.5 percent, at $2,133 per tonne.
In cocoa, New York and London futures rose as dealers awaited demand data due on Thursday, with the expectation that Europe's first-quarter grind will be up around 3 percent compared with the same period a year ago. July cocoa on Liffe settled up 6 pounds, or 0.3 percent, at 1,887 pounds a tonne. May cocoa futures on ICE closed up $19, or 0.6 percent, at $3,011 a tonne. The May/July spread widened to a $17 discount after narrowing sharply on Tuesday to a $9 discount, ahead of first notice day on April 22.
Front-month raw sugar futures on ICE fell 0.12 cent, or 0.7 percent, to settle at 17.04 cents a lb. "We are not showing a clear medium-term trend at the moment and are rangebound with support expected at 17.00 to 16.80 cents and resistance around 17.40 to 17.70 cents," said Thomas Kujawa, co-head of the softs department at Sucden Financial Sugar. May white sugar futures on Liffe finished down $5.70, or 1.2 percent, at $454.70 a tonne.
Comments
Comments are closed.