ABSTRACT
One of the most serious problems in the analysis of the cocoa market is the quality of the production data. As in the coffee market, there have been a number of unilateral and multilateral attempts to restrict the volatility of cocoa prices. Trading the cocoa market when the buffer-stock manager is active does require monitoring of the SDR exchange rate. Assessing the impact of weather developments, or other influences on supply, is made somewhat difficult by the poor quality of the data on production, but against this it should be remembered that the cocoa market does trend strongly. Unlike the coffee market, there are no real opportunities for trading New York against London and Paris. The most spectacular bull run on the sugar market was in 19734, when a series of production problems occurred against a background of steady growth in consumption.
