Coffee futures on ICE eased on Tuesday, with arabica prices hovering above a three-month trough and robusta easing slightly after the prior session's rally, while sugar and cocoa meandered lower with no new fundamentals to give direction. The soft commodities bucked strength seen in larger markets, with the 19-market Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity Index rising for the first time in six sessions.
May robusta settled down $18, or 0.8 percent, at $2,168 per tonne. Dealers said the dip was a correction from the previous day, when a rally triggered buy stops but lacked follow-through interest. "Because prices have been relatively high, we think the origins have front-loaded a lot of their selling, which means price tightness will come in as time goes by," said one dealer. Others noted some of that pressure could be eased by the start of the Indonesian harvest next month. May arabica coffee settled down 0.35 cent, or 0.3 percent, at $1.3885 per lb.
"There is still arabica to sell from Peru and Central America, and ideas are that the coming arabica crop in Brazil will be a good one," said Jack Scoville, vice president with Price Futures Group in Chicago. May London cocoa settled down 11 pounds, or 0.6 percent, at 1,708 pounds per tonne. May New York cocoa settled down $21, or 1 percent, at $2,129 per tonne, having traded just below the 100-day moving average the past six sessions.
The markets have traded sideways the past week after bouncing up from multi-year lows reached in early March. "The market corrected after oversold conditions," said one dealer. The market awaited new fundamentals to guide prices, with traders monitoring top grower Ivory Coast, where the country's marketing board is expected to set the farmer price for the upcoming mid-crop.
May raw sugar settled down 0.14 cent, or 0.79 percent, at 17.56 cents per lb, after speculator buying pushed prices as high as 18.17 cents in earlier trade. Total open interest rose to 802,601 lots on Monday, the highest since Feb. 15 and the eighth straight rise, ICE data showed. May white sugar settled down $2.60, or 0.5 percent, at $495.30 per tonne, with dealers noting position rolling ahead of contract expiry on April 13.
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