This review of the cocoa market situation focuses on the prices of the May-2020 and Jul-2020 futures contracts listed on ICE Futures Europe (London) and ICE Futures U.S. (New York) during the month of May 2020. It aims to highlight key insights on expected market developments and the effect of the exchange rate on the US-denominated prices of the said contracts.
Figure 1 shows the development of the aforementioned futures contracts prices on the London whilst Figure 2 depicts the evolution of prices for the same futures contracts on the New York market at the London closing time. Hence, by monitoring the development of the US dollar index in May, one can determine the impact of the US dollar exchange rate on the development of the futures prices during the period under review. Figure 3 presents monthly averages of cocoa butter and powder prices in Europe and the United States since the start of the 2019/20 crop year.