Friday, February 20, 2009

Coffee demand outstrips supply; coffee stocks up for commodity squeeze?

When I first came to the market, there were still some survivors of the '73-'74 bear on trading desks.
Their eyes were dead.
That decline lasted 694 days, January 11, 1973 to December 6, 1974.
By comparison, it's only been 499 days since the DJIA set it's all time high, 14164.53, on October 9, 2007.
I need some coffee.
From BloggingStock:
Coffee is set to be "one of the most promising commodities of 2009," according to a leading Swiss commodities analyst, who predicts coffee prices will rise, likely squeezing the already-decaffeinated profits at Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) and Kraft (NYSE: KFT), maker of Maxwell House, among other major coffee retailers. Current prices are $1.1305 a pound, only up a 0.9% on the year, but experts predict greatly increasing costs due to declining production in Brazil and Colombia. Coffee futures are currently at $1.20 per pound for December 2009 contracts, and $1.227 per pound for March 2010 contracts.

How much price runup are we talking? It could be increasing a whopping 50% to $1.70 per pound by June 30, according to former Merrill Lynch analyst Judith Ganes-Chase, who runs a consulting firm in Katonah, New York....MORE