Coffee Ends Week Lower As Buyers Fail to Materialize

Coffee prices slid to end at the lowest level since Dec. 26, disappointing bulls who expected index funds to push prices higher.

Arabica coffee for March delivery lost 0.5% to end at $1.225 a pound on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange.

The market expected index funds this week to buy 8,000 to 9,000 lots, ED&F Man's Volcafe said.

"Any expected upward moves were seemingly washed away, with no real fundamentals to explain the down move," the firm said.

Trend following funds and selling out of Central America and Vietnam appear to be helped the bears Thursday.

Weather didn't help the bulls with plenty of rain in some areas of Brazil this week, the world's largest grower. Price Futures Group said there are reports of short crops in parts of Central America and some areas in South America due to the lack of farmer investment from the low prices "but Honduras has production and has been selling as much as possible, and ideas of bigger crops this year in Honduras and Vietnam are offsetting reports of smaller crops in the rest of Central America and Colombia."

In other markets, raw sugar ended flat at 14.18 cents a pound for March delivery, March cocoa ended lower, down 0.7% at $1,914 a ton, March frozen concentrated orange juice was off 0.2% at $1.362 a pound and March cotton lost 1.2% to end at 81.68 cents a pound.

Write to Julie Wernau at julie.wernau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 12, 2018 17:37 ET (22:37 GMT)