CSCE cocoa futures ended unchanged to down slightly on Tuesday as speculative short-covering gave way to scale-up trade selling which "washed out" the day's gains and kept futures held in a sideways range, floor sources said.
"They did the same thing on the way down as they did on the way up everybody is getting in and getting out," said one trader. Benchmark July finished unchanged at $1,358 a tonne, after trading from $1,351 to $1,376.
Spot may close steady as well at $1,354 a tonne, while the rest of the board ended down $1 to $2. Futures followed their call lower as the US dollar strengthened against the pound overnight, making New York cocoa more expensive against prices in London, but managed to make midseason gains on speculative short-covering before the trade sold at the top of the range, dealers said.
"There is just nothing bullish out there to take this market higher. Even with tensions rising in Ivory Coast, the movement of the crops are unaffected," said one analyst. Meanwhile, cocoa arrivals at ports in Ivory Coast reached 1,155,803 tonnes between the start of the 2003/04 (October-September) campaign and April 30.
This compared with 1,159,449 tonnes delivered to ports during the same period of the 2002/03 season, official data from the Coffee and Cocoa Bourse (BCC) showed on Tuesday.
While 2003/04 arrivals were ahead of the previous season at the end of the main crop (October-March), exporters said port deliveries of cocoa from the smaller mid-crop, which began at the beginning of April, were timid.
They said farmers were not rushing to sell cocoa, nor middlemen to buy it, because farmgate prices paid to producers were low. Estimated final futures volume on Tuesday stood at 6,157 lots compared with 2,986 lots on Monday's session.
In the options ring, there were 1,038 calls and 107 puts traded. Technical analysts pegged support in July cocoa at the $1,350 level, while resistance was continued to be seen at $1,400 a tonne.
There were no notices delivered against the May contract on Tuesday keeping the cumulative total at 988 notices. CSCE is a subsidiary of the New York Board of Trade.