This review of the cocoa market situation provides a brief on the September 2020 (SEP-20) and December 2020 (DEC-20) futures contracts prices listed on ICE Futures Europe (London) and ICE Futures U.S. (New York) during the month of August 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 futures contracts prices on the London market while 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 August, one can extricate the impact of the US dollar exchange rate on the development of the futures prices denominated in US dollar during the period under review. Finally, 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.