Cocoa futures dropped nearly 2 percent on Thursday as speculative fund selling weighed on the market while industry buyers held back, traders and analysts said.
On the New York Board of Trade, the most-active December cocoa contract fell $29 to settle at $1,453 a tonne, near the low end of a $1,448 to $1,470 trading range.
March 2005 slid $27 to $1,473, while longer-dated cocoa futures declined $28 across the board.
"It is likely that spec people were dumping out on concerns that we might break out to the downside," said David Hightower of The Hightower Report, a futures analysis and forecasting company.