Evening Coffee By Societe Generale

     New York coffee eased off over its first fifteen minutes, triggering stops at three-day lows, finding support in the neighborhood of last week's close. We rallied steadily over through the third hour of active trading, 3¾¢ off the low, as the dollar fell to an eight-month low against the Brazilian real, then gave back 1½¢ of that gain late in the session. We closed  just over one cent above the opening trade,  a spinning top in candlestick jargon, in this case likely reflecting indecision over near-term market direction.
    May New York (KCEK6) settled in its upper half (64%), up 1.40¢. Volume was seventeen percent above average at an estimated 51,396 lots including an estimated 945 EFP's, 2,930 EFS's, 1,534 TAS and 19,991 spreads. 2,748 calls and 2,983 puts also traded. The KCEK6-LRCK6 arbitrage: 54.67¢. Ratio: 1.7913. €: $1.1268-0%. BRL: 3.4769/$+0.6%. CRB: -¼%. Crude oil: -0.2%. S&P500:+0%. Open interest: 194,754-688 (50-day stochastic: 68%; 125-day: 73%).
     May London (LRCK6) settled in its upper half (64%), eight dollars higher. Volume was twenty-six percent above average at an estimated 22,093 lots including 8,954 spreads and 247 EFP's. 1,496 calls and 1,780 puts also traded. Open interest: 113,794-2 (50-day stochastic: 0%; 125-day: 21%).
     The Green Coffee Association releases its end-March U.S. warehouse stocks estimate tomorrow afternoon. Stocks rose 33,982 bags in February to 5,869,288 bags. Over the 1989 to 2015 period stocks rose by an average of 140,856 bags in March - the biggest average monthly increase. Last March, stocks fell 116,443 bags to 5,035,109. The Coffee “C” portion of the number (U.S. stocks-plus-pending) fell 38,106 bags in March to 403,548.
John Bernardi