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CSCE cocoa settles higher, but stays within range

NEW YORK: CSCE cocoa futures crept higher again on Wednesday but are still unable to break out out of the trading range that they have been entrenched in since late December, traders and brokers said.

"Cocoa does not want to go up. It doesn't want to go down either. You've got industry buying and some origin selling, but no one wants to really step up the pace and push it through either way," one floor trader said.

Active March ended up $8 at $854 a tonne after trading $855-$843. May gained the same to end at $881 and the rest rose $8-$9.

Beans opened unchanged, with some light industry buying taking prices back up to test the nearby $855 resistance level, with origin and arbitrage selling above the market, floor traders said.

"You had industry buying on the dips and a little arbitrage selling in the morning. When London closed they tried to test the upside, but it came in just a little to late in the day," one broker said.

He added that speculative and some late options-related buying allowed active March to close just off its intraday high.

LIFFE cocoa futures were also stuck in a range by Wednesday's close, with front month March ending four pounds higher at 568 pounds a tonne.

Industry sources said Wednesday that Brazilian cocoa grinders have placed orders to import around 10,000 tonnes of beans from Indonesia.

They expect imports amounting to some 20,000 tonnes of Indonesian cocoa, cheaper than the West African material, but of correspondingly lower quality, for later in the year.

Technically, chartists pegged nearby resistance for March CSCE cocoa at $855, then $867-70, with nearby support was seen at $839-35, followed by $824-20, then all the way down to $804-800.

Volume reached an estimated 4,089 lots against the previous official volume of 3,967 lots.

The CSCE is a subsidiary of the New York Board of Trade.-Reuters