US cocoa futures settled lower Tuesday in moderate business on some light speculative sales as the market remained in a range after last week's short-covering rally, brokers said.
"The market in a pause mode right now. It moves and then it gets quiet, so right now we're waiting for the next move. The funds came in and covered a good portion of a very large short position last week, which gave us the rally, and now they are sort of neutralised," said one broker.
New York Board of Trade active March cocoa ended down $5 at $1,404 a tonne after trading from $1,393 to $1,416 which held within Monday's trading range. May fell $5 as well to $1,425 and back-month contracts settled $4 to $5 lower.
Final volume was estimated at just 4,914 lots, down from Monday's count of 6,353 lots. Open interest rose 513 lots to 123,139 lots as of November 28.