Coffee Commentary for April 24th

Arabica coffee futures ended higher Friday at the end of a slow session. The active contract for July delivery settled 65 points higher at 142.15 cents a pound. A total of 4,501 switches were traded. No major fundamental or economic factors influenced on today’s action. The US dollar declined modestly against the main currencies. In Brazil, the real remained firm, trading at BRL2.965 at 2:30 pm EST. In related news, ending inventories in Brazil could be as low as 4.0 million at the end of June, compare with 15.0 million at the end of June 2014 Escritorio Carvalhaes said today, Bloomberg reported. Last year drought and high volume of sales during the last season contributed with the reduction of the stocks, said Escritorio Carvalhaes. During the present week, Arabica prices gained 35 points or 0.2 %. A constructive technical picture added support to the prices.
London Market - Export numbers out of Vietnam this year have recorded a noted downturn of over 40% as of March, compared with the same working period last season. When we look back over the longer term averages the trend is still well into the upper segment after numbers peaked out back in 2013. The volume of coffee held in bonded warehouses and by local traders is suggested still to be very high as we operate into the offseason. Crop numbers covering 2014/15 are pitched between 27 to 30 million bags with a carryover stock into this season towards 9 million so the numbers look overall sizeable. Local trading conditions have become more fluid this week with traders catching up on shipments and differentials weakening. We have slipped into a regular pattern regarding the open interest movements as we move towards deliveries at the end of next week. Spot month exposure is decent carrying over 18,000 lots starting today’s session. A significant part of the action revolves around exposure just moving down the board. Since the start of the month open interest has only changed by 800 lots! Arbitrage values have widened towards 9 cents which has pulled a decent working short into London but by the same token we still have outstanding fixing nearby which the origin need to address.