After the March and April rains helped the drought-parched crop outlook in Brazil, coffee exchange traded notes are slipping into bear territory.
The iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee Total Return Sub-Index ETN (NYSEArca: JO) has plunged 20.7% from an April 22 high, playing out a classic double top trend line. Nevertheless, JO is still up 61.1% year-to-date. [Coffee ETNs Could Face Technical Headwinds]
ICE coffee futures are now trading around $1.72 per pound, falling 21% from a two-year high in April, as rainfall helped crop conditions in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, reports Luzi Ann Javier for Bloomberg.
Money managers reduced their net-long positions by 3.4% to 39,482 contracts as of May 27, the second decline in three weeks.
Brazilian growers now expect to harvest 50.5 million bags for the season that starts this year, compared to 49.5 million estimates.
“The feeling is that the damage from the drought was overstated, and also the inventories are ample,” Hernando de la Roche, a senior vice-president at INTL FCStone, said in the article. “There is also less buying in the northern hemisphere during summer months.”
Additionally, adequate stockpiles helped soften the impact of poor crop production due to Brazil’s drought in the first quarter. U.S. stockpiles of unroasted beans increased 7.6% in April year-over-year.
While the much needed moisture helped Brazilian crops, some analysts expect prices to remain elevated due to extensive damage.
“It’s a mistake to suppose that coming rains will solve the problems we’ve had,” Washington Rodrigues, the president and chief executive officer of the Alfenas, Minas Gerais-based Ipanema, said in the article. “Once vegetative growth is lost, you don’t recover it.”
Coffee is the best-performing commodity of 2014, surging on drought conditions in Brazil, which some analysts expecting the first global shortage in five years. [Brazil Drought Supporting Coffee ETNs, with Futures Trading at 2-Year High]
iPath Dow Jones-UBS Coffee Total Return Sub-Index ETN
For more information on coffee, visit our coffee category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.