Speculators hiked bearish bets in arabica coffee on ICE Futures US to a record in the week to Dec. 12, as they switched to a sugar net short position and boosted a bearish stance in cocoa, weekly US government data showed on Friday. The dealers increase a net long position in cotton futures and options, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday.
In coffee, the dealers hiked their bearish stance to the largest since records became publicly available in 2006, CFTC data showed. They upped a net short stance in coffee by 18,071 contracts to 55,491 contracts in a week that benchmark prices touched 5-1/2-month lows. The dealers switched to a net short of 87,486 contracts in sugar, cutting 88,409 contracts, the data showed. The big turn-about followed two weeks during which they held a small net long position in the commodity.