New York cocoa futures on ICE rose on Thursday to a 16-month peak as speculative buying continued to push the market higher, while raw sugar climbed off an eight-month low touched the previous day. May New York cocoa was up $46, or 1.9 percent, at $2,489 a tonne by 1441 GMT, having peaked at $2,522, the highest for the second position since November 2016.
Dealers pointed to short-covering and fresh buying by speculators, who continued to pile in to the market. Prices have rallied recently amid aggressive fund buying after signs that top grower Ivory Coast could be on course to produce less cocoa than initially expected.
"There has been massive short-covering in New York, and the specs are adding fresh longs into the market," one dealer said. May London cocoa was up 20 pounds, or 1.2 percent, at 1,747 pounds a tonne after touching 1,749 pounds, its highest since March 2017.
The gains were somewhat limited by the market's most technically overbought level since 2008. Dealers said that, fundamentally, the focus remained on production in Ivory Coast, where port arrivals are slowing as the main crop winds down.
May raw sugar was up 0.15 cents, or 1.2 percent, at 12.94 cents per lb, having hit a session high of 13.11 cents. Dealers said the market was supported by speculative short-covering after prices tumbled nearly 5 percent on Wednesday to their lowest since June 2017.
The sell-off came after an Indian trade body sharply increased its output forecast, triggering aggressive fund selling and producer pricing. May white sugar rose by $4.10, or 1.2 percent, to $358.20 a tonne.
The front-month was trading at a premium to the August position, though dealers said it was unlikely this reflected real appetite for delivery. "It seems the strength of the London spread may be due not to the lack of refined whites but more to the reluctance of EU producers to export at these low levels," Nick Penney, senior trader at Sucden Financial, said in a market update.
May arabica coffee was down 0.45 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $1.2030 per lb. May robusta coffee fell $1, or 0.1 percent, to $1,784 a tonne.
Vietnam, the world's top robusta producer, exported 129,893 tonnes (2.16 million 60kg bags) of coffee in February, down 35.3 percent from the previous month.