Arabica coffee on ICE took its biggest tumble in a month in modest dealings on Thursday, giving back the prior session's steep gains after a US government attache upwardly revised output for Brazil's past-crop and Colombia's current crop. Raw sugar on ICE Futures US jumped nearly 2 percent on chart-based buying. New York and London cocoa futures were quietly lower as the markets continued to consolidate after falling from September's 3-1/2-year high.
In coffee, a US Department of Agriculture attache late Wednesday revised up 2014/15 output to 51.2 million 60-kg bags in Brazil, the world's biggest producer. The attache report, which is not official USDA data, showed a rise of 1.7 million bags compared with the previous attache estimate due to better than expected yields in some growing areas.
Another attache report raised the forecast for Colombia, the biggest grower of washed arabica, by 400,000 bags to 12.3 million bags in its current 2014/15 crop year. "The USDA figure was above the upper end of (the) 50 million bags that had been expected," said Andrea Thompson, analyst with CoffeeNetwork, part of INTL FCStone. March arabica coffee on ICE closed down 10.25 cents, or 5.2 percent, at $1.8885 per lb, having earlier slid more than 4 percent to an intra-day low of $1.9065. It attracted technical investor selling as it fell below the 200-day moving average at $1.9235 and 20-day moving average at $1.92, which crossed on the day.
January robusta coffee futures on ICE closed down $13, or 0.6 percent, at $2,078 a tonne. March raw sugar finished up 0.23 cent, or 1.5 percent, at 16.10 cents a lb, attracting technical buying as it broke above the 20-day moving average while the 50-day moving average marked resistance at 16.22 cents. March whites rose $5.30, or 1.3 percent, to end at $421.70 a tonne.
A holiday in top grower Brazil kept producer selling out of the market there, allowing prices to easily rise, traders said. ICE March cocoa settled down $6, or 0.2 percent, at $2,829 a tonne. March London cocoa ended down 5 pounds, or 0.3 percent, at 1,874 pounds per tonne.
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