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CSCE cocoa futures end near lows, specs sell

NEW YORK: CSCE cocoa tumbled further on Tuesday when speculators continued to sell, although manufacturer buying earlier supported prices at the lower end of the range, traders and brokers said.

Active March fell $22 to finish just above the session low of $828 a tonne after trading $837-$825. May shed $21 to end at $857 and back months lost $17-$19.

The market was closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

Bean prices opened lower than predicted as some carry through fund selling from last Friday's liquidation hit the market, triggering commission house stops, floor traders said.

"We opened in a range of $10-15 lower, which put us straight through the lows of Thursday in the 845-47 area, so hit some stops there," one broker said.

"When the market failed to bounce it just attracted some pretty heavy spec (speculative) liquidation today and right in to the close it was all spec liquidation," he added.

But floor traders said that good offtake by manufacturers had supported prices earlier in the day.

London's LIFFE cocoa fell on origin selling in switch-dominated business. Active March lost three pounds to 561 pounds a tonne.

In fundamental news, Ivory Coast's New Caistab commodities regulator said on Tuesday that it saw a 1999/2000 main cocoa crop of 900,824 tonnes, down by 5.52 percent on the official 1998/99 main crop total.

But crop analysts from main cocoa processing and trading companies criticise the New Caistab's method of pod counting and challenge the "old" Caistab's 1998/99 main crop total, which they put at around 1.0 million tonnes.

Technically, chartists pegged nearby resistance for CSCE March at $850, with nearby support at $824-20, then all the way down to $804-800.

Volume reached an estimated 13,518 lots against Friday's official volume of 6,622 lots.

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