NEW YORK: Orange juice futures finished lower due to light investor sales as weak outside markets pressured the juice complex although losses were pared by the start of the annual Atlantic hurricane season on Friday, brokers said.
A weak US jobs report aggravated fears of a global slump and sent investors scurrying for safe-haven assets, pressuring many commodity markets as a result.
Benchmark July frozen concentrated orange juice shed 0.35 cent to finish at $1.117 per lb after trading from $1.091 to $1.125.
For the week, the market ended up 2.2 percent.
But juice futures sank in May by 21 percent, the biggest monthly percentage loss since declining 22.13 percent in December 1996, Thomson Reuters data showed.
Volume on Friday was almost 4,000 lots, some 40 percent above the 30-day moving average, Thomson Reuters data showed.
"There was mild profit-taking after a little bit of a bounce," Sterling Smith, vice-president of commodity research at Citibank's Institutional Client Group in Chicago, said in alluding to the modest gains notched by the juice market for most of the week.
One of the factors which served to pare market losses was Friday's opening of the annual Atlantic hurricane season.
The season got off to a running start with two tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl, forming days before the official kick off. The season ends on Nov. 30.
Alberto was the earliest storm to form in the Atlantic since 2003.
The hurricane-premium buying has helped shore up a fundamentally weak juice market.
Juice futures have struggled in the face of ideal growing weather in Florida, the top citrus grower in the US, weak retail demand and ample supplies from top producer Brazil.
Open interest, an indicator of investor interest, stood at 25,270 lots as of May 31, the highest such level since Feb. 7, ICE Futures US data showed.
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