World sugar market: Sugar futures rally on crop reports

摘要

World sugar prices remained mostly range bound and directionless during the first days of May. However, on May 13, prices began to rise noticeably above the floor seen at the beginning of the year due to a slower-than-expected start of crushing in Brazil's Centre/South (CS) region. There were also supportive crop forecasts for 2014/15, which raised expectations that the period of ever rising stocks could come to an end further down the road. It will be recalled that raw sugar futures in New York (NY)fell as low as 14.70 cents/lb. at the end of January but are currently trading above 18 cents/ lb. Similarly, London white sugar futures briefly visited US$399.10/t (?291.86/t) at the end of January but are now trading near US$495/t (?362/t). While thefirst-month raw sugar price in NY was still at 17.80 cents/lb. on May 1st, it rose to 18.25 cents on May 14. White sugar prices in London rose by more than 3% from US$478.40 (?349.78/t) to US$494.4/t (?361.48/t) during the same period. The InternationalSugar Agreement (ISA) average for May 1-14 was 18.13 cents/lb. compared with 17.61 cents/lb. in April and 17.62 cents/lb. in May 2013.