Coffee Futures Soar Again

Massive speculative buying of coffee futures sent prices soaring Friday, concluding a week of wild trading on the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York.

It was the sixth trading day out of the last seven that prices settled 6 cents a pound higher, the limit for a day’s trading set by the exchange. The contract for delivery in March, on which there is no limit, was more than 23 cents higher before settling for an advance of 15.10 cents after profit taking.

Kim Badenhop, an analyst in New York with Merrill Lynch Futures, said the drought in Brazil, the world’s No. 1 grower, remains the driving factor on the coffee market.

The Brazilian Coffee Institute said Thursday that it will not release a long-awaited crop estimate until some time in the future because some of the data is now out of date because of the drought.

The petroleum markets continued in nervous trading, opening higher, declining under good trade selling and never able to mount a serious rally, analysts said.