Over a trade2win there is a good thread on coffee with lots of charts. The thread title is something like "Coffee, the next big bull market", although it is old enough that there has been bear and then another bull market in the mean time. I can only read it for about five minutes before I have to go get a coffee to drink.
Robusta Coffee is assigned symbol "LKD" and commodity number 148 by Commodity Systems Inc. (home page). If you subscribe to their data you get London Robusta Coffee futures prices back to January 02, 1968. It isn't free but then again, most things in life aren't free.
I was just looking at the Liffe robusta contract and was looking at the inverted futures curve, that is the near in contracts are worth more than the further out contracts. This means that it does not pay to store coffee. It would seem to me from what I know about grain markets that this is a rare situation that will eventually reverse itself. What does everyone think about this trade; Short may 1442 Long July 1428 With the idea that the spread should at least go to zero. Can anybody tell me why this inversion should persist?
Well I just checked up on my paper trade and the prices are now May 1424 July 1423 Good thing I bought 1000 pretend spreads