Coffee Futures Drop Up to 4.72% as ICE Margin Hikes Trigger Fund Selling
Updated
Updated · Barchart · Jul 10
Coffee Futures Drop Up to 4.72% as ICE Margin Hikes Trigger Fund Selling
2 articles · Updated · Barchart · Jul 10
Summary
September robusta fell 4.72% and arabica lost 3.92% on Friday, extending this week’s violent swings after ICE raised coffee-futures margin requirements twice.
Those hikes drained liquidity and pushed commodity funds to cut positions, amplifying one-way selling in a market already vulnerable because funds held 44,195 net-long robusta contracts as of July 7—the biggest in more than two years.
The selloff followed an earlier rally that sent arabica to a 5.5-month high and robusta to a 5-month high as Brazil’s 2026/27 harvest reached only 52% by July 1, behind both last year and the five-year average.
Supportive supply risks still linger: ICE arabica inventories fell to a 2.25-year low of 344,269 bags, and forecasters say a strong El Niño could disrupt flowering and production in Brazil and across Asia later this year.