Good morning and happy Monday to you,

Here in the Northeast we have the dreaded forecast for a “wintery mix” coming tonight into tomorrow. That’s the worst kind of weather forecast for us; snow is easier to deal with than ice. Please be ready for a bit of disruption in schedules both for us and our logistics partners, just in case.

Very interesting week in the C market. Funds continued to buy the market hard all week, until the very last day, when we had a new high and then a failure for the first time to continue to extend the gains and the market came off in a very “outside day”. When the dust had settled the market had given up all gains past Tuesday, partly inspired by expiring Jan options. The disaggregated COT with options shows that fund took on 5887 new longs and went less short 9287 lots for a total bought of 15, 174 lots. Total exposure 50, 598 long, 21515 short and that’s as of mid-last week we should again see that number go up when this week’s information comes out if nothing changes, and it appears the buying is back again today undaunted from the decline of Friday.

On a macro level the Brazil Real is in to 4.07 which is as strong as it’s been in a while, but, that said, the currency and the higher market really hasn’t inspired much better pricing from Brazil that we were able to see. More aggressive were Colombia and the Centrals, who got really aggressive especially in the second half of 2020 as producers wanted to lock in the 2020 levels of the higher C. There were even tweets from Colombia’s FNC encouraging producers to lock in these levels but reminding them that they had to honor all of their contracts done along the way. This of course, is the rub and should be interesting to see how it all plays out over time.

We’re expecting an “inside day” after the “outside day” of Friday, that said the 1.4030 high of Friday now becomes important and if the market got back there you’d probably find some new buying waiting on the confirmation the market is bullish again.

We’ve got some nice new Kenya AA and AB just in the warehouse, along with a really nice FTO Peru that just arrived and is already selling well. We have the usual suspects FTO Sumatra, Honduras Marcala, Nicaragua SHG, Mexico Chiapas, and Colombia Tolima ready to go. Some Panama Bouquete, Guatemala Antigua, some RFA Sumatra Mandheling, all in Continental for you. If we can be of help, please let us know.

The Armenia Team