Coffee beans are in short supply right now and it’s injected some life into the coffee exchange traded note (ETN) as a result.
Brett Arends for The Wall Street Journal reports that the shortage has meant that prices for arabica beans—the kind used in a decent cup of roast coffee—have jumped by more than a third in the past few months to multi-year highs. [Coffee ETN Gets Its Fix.]
Fueling the price spike further is a weak harvest and a world growing increasingly full of coffee drinkers. Brazil’s harvest may be the savior and ease things, but the catch is that Brazil tends to keep a lot of its crop for itself an the crop is expected to be lower than in years past, anyway. [Coffee Bean Shortage Gives A Jolt To ETN.]
So far, a pound of Arabica sold for as little as $1.30 earlier this year; the latest price: around $1.80. iPath Dow Jones AIG Coffee TR Sub-Index ETN (NYSEArca: JO) has responded in kind: year-to-date, it’s up 33.5%. Coffee futures also account for 11% of PowerShares DB Agriculture (NYSEArca: DBA), which is up 2.3% year-to-date.
Tisha Guerrero contributed to this article.
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.