US cocoa futures registered modest gains for the third consecutive session, buoyed more by non-commercial participants switching contracts than outright buying interest, traders said on Thursday.
Dealers have been rolling their positions into back month futures contracts from the front month delivery ahead of its first notice day on November 15.
The New York Board of Trade's front-month December cocoa futures contract climbed $8 to settle at $1,349 a tonne, after trading from $1,340 to $1,360. March cocoa advanced $5 to end at $1,377, and more distant contracts rose $5 to $6. "It was very quiet with month-to-month transactions in focus," said a trader.
He estimated futures trading volume at about 18,000 lots, of which about 6,000 contracts were deals focused on the December/March spread.
On Wednesday, the March contract had 52,502 lots of open interest, a rise of 2,176 lots from the previous day.
Open interest in December had declined by 5,496 lots to 26,741 contracts during the same period. Other traders attributed the modest gains to a slip in the dollar vs sterling in the session, which fuelled light arbitrage-related buying here. In London, the Life's benchmark December cocoa delivery settled at 809 pounds a tonne, up 0.4 percent.
At 11:50 am EST (1650 GMT), the pound was quoted at $1.7460, up from $1.7420 at the time when the New York cocoa market closed the previous session.
Meanwhile, licensed cocoa buyers in Ghana who refused to buy beans in a dispute with regulator Cocobod over its quality grading system have resumed purchases after the state body agreed to relax controls, buyers told Reuters in Accra on Thursday.
The row centred on the grading system Cookbook introduced for the 2005/06 main crop season designed to maintain the countries reputation as the provider of the world's best-quality cocoa.
Ghana is the world's second-biggest cocoa producer behind neighbouring Ivory Coast.