NEW YORK: Orange juice futures finished sharply higher on Friday on bullish technical factors and worries about possible short supply ahead of the cold storage report due next week, said brokers
"I think the inventory of cold storage report is an indication of what's going on in the market place," said Kevin Sharpe, commodities broker of Basic Commodities.
Benchmark January FCOJ jumped 5.05 cents to end at $1.7615 per lb, a 2.94 percent increase. The range ran from $1.7160 to $1.7825 per lb., a total 3.75 percent gain.
Friday's total volume came to 1,752 lots, about 13 percent below the 30-day average, preliminary Thomson Reuters data showed.
With cold storage inventory drawdowns occurring for awhile, brokers said investors feared the report due next Tuesday would show inventories had grown even lighter and bought futures ahead of time to prepare.
"You look at cold storage numbers this year and they've been drawn down month in and month out. You have a lot of it going to fresh orange juice and the overall crop size is not enough to meet demand we have for frozen concentrate," said Sharpe.
Technical factors also bolstered the benchmark contract.
In the run up, juice futures broke through resistance at $1.74 and $1.75, two prior highs, which triggered stop-loss buy orders and sent the contract to its highest level since late October.
Sharpe said he sees scope for orange juice to rise to next resistance at $1.80 then $1.83, especially if the cold storage report shows another drop off in inventories.
Juice futures have also been supported by winter premium buying as players hedge their positions in case a hard freeze hits Florida during the northern hemisphere winter.
A freeze struck Florida in 2010 and in 2011, causing damage to fruit and stressing citrus trees in the Sunshine State.
Forecaster Telvent DTN said, in Florida, the top citrus growing state in the United States, temperatures would be near to above normal with conditions mostly dry or a few light showers during the next 5 days.
Open interest came to 26,804 lots as of Nov 17, down 481 contracts from the Thursday total, ICE Futures US data said.
Volume traded Thursday rose to 1,465 lots, well up from Wednesday's count of 699 lots, exchange figures showed.
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