From Javier Blas at Bloomberg: "The Meltdown in Chocolate Is Coming" http://tinyurl.com/240219BlasJ A Bloomberg subscription is not required. This is a gift article. The link expires in seven days.
Reminds me of lumber prices back 2 yrs ago wheen they surged to unimaginable heights and then collapsed. Same thing will happen here. But first everyone has to make money on wallstreet first from the 40 to 50 yr highs on these prices. As you can see now hedge funds are going to make pricea even higher, because of course there always has to be fu*king greed when it comes to anything in this world.... Hedge fund stampede into cocoa futures fuels record price jump https://www.ft.com/content/563227fe-edfb-40bd-bea9-dc2822ba4f27
When the price hits a record high, you will see two types of reports 1. Cocoa prices break the record high!!! PLEASE BUY NOW!!!!! 2. Cocoa prices are now very high! Oh NO! The sky is going to fall! QUICK!!!! SHORT THE MARKET!!!!! __________ Never read those reports. Always do your own analysis.
After checking for some ETFs related to cocoa, they did have 2 tradeable ETNs back about a decade ago.. CHOC and NIB In 2013 they both gained a gigantic 30% ....wonder where they would be trading today ...
This is going to be a beautiful collapse. I don't trade futures but damn this is going to be some crazy money maker here to the downside. Anyone long now must be really wide awake at night.
What happened since I posted the above chart? If it collapses from here, it's gonna get bloody. Cocoa futures opens in about 90 minutes.
The evening I learned the unspoken truth about the cocoa market I was in Yamoussoukro, the colossal capital city of Ivory Coast. “The problem with cocoa is that’s a poor man’s crop,” explained my dining companion, a government official-turned-businessman. “Do you see any commercial plantation around here? No,” he said. “And do you know why? Because prices aren’t high enough.” Only because millions of West African farmers saw cocoa as their only way to escape abject poverty, the world had plentiful supply and low prices. As a result, you and I have been enjoying the pleasures of chocolate on the cheap for decades. Unlike most other agricultural commodities, cocoa hasn’t developed into a plantation business. At the prevailing prices of the 1990s and 2000s, it simply didn’t make commercial sense. The money was made around trading the beans, and processing them into chocolate — not planting, growing and harvesting cocoa trees. Today, the crop is still grown overwhelmingly by poor smallholders1. Just making enough to subsist, most lack the means to re-invest in their plots. And finally, the decades of underinvestment have caught up with growing chocolate demand. For the third consecutive crop season, global consumption in 2023-24 will meaningfully surpass production – something unseen since the early 1960s. We are all now confronting the inevitable chocolate crisis. Chocolate Crisis Cocoa prices have surged past their previous all-time high, in place for 46 years, as global production falls well short of demand for the commodity Source: Intercontinental Exchange Inc. In the world of commodities, price records have fallen everywhere on the back of the industrialization of China. At the end of 2023, cocoa was one of only a four major commodities that still traded below their price peaks set in the 1970s, the previous commodity boom.2 But the 46-year-old record finally fell this month, when the cost of cocoa jumped in New York to more than $5,500 per metric ton. The industry is now abuzz with hyperbole, including predictions of prices doubling again to $10,000 a ton. I don’t think it will get to that. It’s worth remembering that the cocoa beans traded a year ago for $2,500, and that in 2000 they changed hands at just $650. What’s happening in West Africa will soon be felt in supermarkets around the world. In a conference call with investors on Feb. 8, the day that cocoa prices blew past their previous record, Michele Buck, chief executive officer of The Hershey Co., warned about what’s coming: “We will be using every tool in our toolbox, including pricing, as a way to manage the business.” While today’s predicament could very well lead to the price gouging and shrinkflation at the end of the supply chain, the cause of the crisis resides at the start of the chain in West Africa. There, four countries — Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria — produce nearly 75% of the world’s cocoa. The king is Ivory Coast, which in a normal year produces 2 million tons – compared with global consumption of 5 million tons. Where Cocoa Grows Cocoa trees flourish in a narrow band of 20 degrees north and south of the Equator, turning Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon into top producing countries The father of the nation’s outsized role in the global chocolate industry is Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the cocoa farmer who became the first Ivorian president after independence from France. Under his rule, from 1960 until his death in 1993, he transformed his nation into the world’s largest producer, overtaking Ghana. Banking on the high prices of the 1970s, he used the brown gold to reshape the country, building a new capital city — Yamoussoukro, including a replica of the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica — and for a while turning Abidjan, the commercial hub, into the Manhattan of West Africa. Houphouët-Boigny attracted millions of African farmers with generous incentives, including land ownership for whoever planted cocoa trees3. For the last few decades, the world has benefited from the massive production expansion he triggered. But the low prices have had consequences. The last wave of tree planting in West Africa took place in the early 2000s, particularly around the northwest of Ivory Coast. Those trees are nearly 25 years old, well past their prime. Husbandry has decayed, too, with little use of fertilizer and pesticide. Old cocoa trees mean two problems: lower yields, and plants particularly vulnerable to bad weather and disease. Both factors are at play this year -- punishing farmers who are missing out on the record prices4. The local markets in Ivory Coast and Ghana are tightly controlled by their governments, which set official prices. By selling forward, officials guarantee a price, but that also means that farmers miss out on rallies. For the 2023-24 crop, Ivorian farmers are getting 1,000 central African francs ($1.63) per a kilogram, about 70% below the current wholesale price. Historic shortfall The cocoa market will suffer a large deficit in 2024 for the third consecutive crop season, the most pronounced shortfall in modern history Source: Bloomberg and International Cocoa Organization Note: 2024 is forecast based on interviews with cocoa traders The upshot is a brutal gap between supply and demand. Even when accounting for the damping impact of high prices on consumption, the market is heading for a deficit of 300,000-to-500,000 tons, according to my soundings within the industry. If confirmed, that would be the largest shortfall in at least 65 years — and probably ever. With demand outstripping output by so much, inventories will fall for the third consecutive year. Inside the industry, I hear that by the end of the season, cocoa stockpiles, measured by the stock-to-consumption ratio, could drop to as little as 25%, comparable to the record lows seen in the 1970s. Considering shipping lags, it means the industry is running on virtually no inventory at all. Cocoa brokers report that’s almost impossible to find offers for beans right now — despite the fact that February marks the harvest peak, when warehouses at West African ports should be full. Empty Cupboard Global cocoa inventories, measured by the closely-watched stocks-to-use ratio, have fallen to levels last seen during the cocoa crisis of the late 1970s Source: International Cocoa Organization Note: 2024 is a forecast based on interviews with cocoa traders There’s another side to the supply problem. In the last 30 years, demand has doubled, and only much higher prices are likely to slow the trend. Still, beyond the US and Europe, global chocolate consumption remains small on a per capita basis, creating new markets for expansion5. Solutions are elusive. And what consumers want clashes with producers’ needs. Everyone from chocolate executives to cocoa traders to non-governmental organizations has spent the 21st Century fretting about the unsustainable supply and demand balance. When I spoke to my interlocutor in Yamoussoukro more than a decade ago, I was travelling throughout Ivory Coast documenting the problem of aging trees and farmers seeking a better way of life. For all of that time, farmers have been cash cows for all interests except their own: governments have taxed the sector heavily; traders and the confectionary industry have had more than enough beans to keep chocolate prices affordable, expanding sales to a growing class of sweet lovers; and ultimately the consumers, who saw chocolate transforming from a luxury item into an everyday treat. The Kings of Cocoa West African nations account for nearly 75% of the world's cocoa production, producing together more than 3.5 million metric tons of the commodity Source: International Cocoa Organization Note: 2022-23 crop season Not everyone agrees that current prices are a problem. The farmers outside West Africa with beans to sell – and the ability to do so at prevailing market prices – are enjoying a windfall unseen in generations. For those in Ecuador, Brazil, Indonesia and Peru, the crisis in Africa is a blessing. They’re sure to turn the current boom into more cocoa trees. Even in West Africa, the views are more nuanced. While farmers have missed out on the best cocoa market ever, authorities in Yamoussoukro had encouraged less tree planting in recent years to both shore up prices and stop deforestation. By the next season, Ivorian farmgate prices are likely to pick up, giving farmers a cash infusion. In many ways, the current situation would please Houphouët-Boigny, who dreamed of a one-country cocoa cartel, with Ivory Coast fixing the global price. I’m unconvinced that climate change has anything to do with the current crisis — despite many pundits pinning the trouble on it. The unseasonal rains that have hurt the crop are more likely linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon than to global warming. Yet, it’s clear that more unpredictable weather in the future could be another handicap for the cocoa sector. For the confectionary industry, the prices present an acute problem. I doubt the sector will be able to pass all the higher costs onto consumers. So margins could fall, and demand growth for chocolate slow down, or even reverse. The producers of mass-market chocolate – think the cocoa that goes into a pain au chocolate, for example – would suffer. Consumers, inevitably, would pay more. The crisis is a necessary one. The world needs higher prices to encourage the re-planting millions of old trees — and take better care of the current ones. If every farmer applied a little more fertilizer, and had pesticides at hand, production could recover. That, or projected chocolate demand growth needs to slow, if not to fall. Clearly, global cocoa inventories can’t drop much further. Ultimately, cocoa is just another boom-and-bust commodity. Over the next few years, market forces will rebalance the market, but everyone must brace for a few years of higher prices. Bittersweet. More From Bloomberg Opinion: Remember Africa Rising? It's Lost Another Decade: Javier Blas Plutocrats Turn Your Sweet Tooth Into Cash: Rachel Sanderson This Bit of Chocolate Costs More Than a Porsche: David Fickling Want more Bloomberg Opinion? OPIN <GO>. Or you can subscribe to our daily newsletter. Around 90% of the world's cocoa is produced by smallholders, each owning less than two hectares of land (equivalent to the size of about three soccer fields). The average farmer harvest between 600 and 800 kilograms of cocoa beans per year. View in article The three other major commodities trading below the nominal price peaks set during the late 1970s commodities boom are: sugar (the record was set in 1974); Arabica coffee (1977); and silver (in 1980). View in article Ivory Coast attracted hundreds of thousands of farmers from its northern neighbors of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, particularly during the 1970s period of high cocoa and coffee prices. Whatever the penuries of cocoa cultivation were, life was still better in Ivory Coast. View in article The weather has been unusually wet in Ivory Coast, and to a lesser extent in Ghana, in the current growing season. The unseasonal rains affected flowering and pod setting, two crucial moments of the development of the crop, according to cocoa traders and agronomists. On top, the region has been badly affected by the so-called swollen shoot disease. The virus, which affects particularly cocoa trees, sharply reduces yields, and ultimately kills the plants. Although the swollen shoot has affected the region for nearly a century, cocoa traders say it's now more widespread than ever. View in article While the average German gulps eight kilograms of chocolate per year -- one of the highest per capita consumptions in the world --, the average Chinese only consumes 200 grams. Americans eat about five kilograms of chocolate a year. View in article This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. To contact the author of this story: Javier Blas at jblas3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net Javier Blas is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. He is coauthor of “The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources.” Up Next When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Popular in Opinion Dave Lee Amazon Deserves to Be Called Out for Swindling Users Javier Blas The Meltdown in Chocolate Is Coming Tyler Cowen Stock Markets Are Driving a New American Century Parmy Olson Google, Microsoft Will Dominate AI as Computing Costs Surge Shuli Ren When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play More From Bloomberg Bitter Valentine’s Day for Chocolatiers With Cocoa Prices at Record High Africa Moves a Step Closer to Continent’s First Cobalt Refinery Indian Farmers Gear Up for Talks After Almost Week of Protests Indian Farmers Pause Protests to Review Government Crop Deal Top Reads US Bid to Loosen China’s Grip on Key Metals for EVs Is Stalling by Mark Burton, Joe Deaux, Michael J Kavanagh, Jennifer A Dlouhy and Annie Lee Climate Change Is Fueling a New Type of Anxiety, Therapists Say by Olivia Rudgard and Jack Wittels Two Rothschild Bank Clans Fight Over Clients, Power and the Family Name by Tara Patel, Marion Halftermeyer and Alexandre Rajbhandari How Paramount Became a Cautionary Tale of the Streaming Wars by Lucas Shaw Opinion Shuli Ren When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Global investors are fleeing China for Japan. They are weaving a fairy tale along the way. February 19, 2024 at 4:00 PM EST By Shuli Ren Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder. Revisit history and tread carefully. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal LEARN MORE Two recent articles from Barron’s, my old home before Bloomberg Opinion, struck me for their observations on the two biggest economies in Asia. One noted that Toyota Motor Corp. was looking like a growth stock, even as the Japanese automaker stayed with its traditional business and hardly sold any electric vehicles. Toyota has risen 32% this year. The second piece, a feature published days later, was titled “China Used to Be the World’s Best Growth Story. Now It’s a Value Play.” Barron’s summarized the market sentiments well. Bruised by China’s big tech crackdown and property bust, global investors have been seeking a new home that’s big and liquid enough to park their money. Naturally, they are looking east to Japan, which seems to be finally stepping out of a deflation stretching back to the 1990s. The Nikkei 225 Index is poised to return to its peak, set in December 1989. Asset managers are forming favorable views towards Japan, while exhibiting “acute apathy on China,” according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s latest survey. About two-thirds expected a stronger Japanese economy, with a longer horizon forending the nation’s negative interest rate policy, and a measured 3.8% wage growth. BloombergOpinionNavalny Paid the Price That Russia’s Economy Hasn’tBond Funds Are Not as Safe as You ThoughtBrain Drain From Putin’s Russia Is Far From OverSoftbank’s Arm Isn’t the AI Play You Think It Is In other words, they were envisioning the perfect macro backdrop for equities — an economy that is growing but not so fast that the Bank of Japan has to tighten. As such, almost 30% surveyed saw double-digit returns over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, alarm bells were ringing on China, with a whopping 75% saying households there would save rather than spend or invest. But I wonder how much of this enthusiasm for the Nikkei is rooted in the fundamentals, and how much is mere justification for momentum-chasing trades. There certainly are red herrings. For instance, we found out recently that Japan slipped into a recession at the end of 2023, countering the economic growth argument. Meanwhile, a resurgence in travel over the Lunar New Year holiday brings into question fund managers’ thesis that the Chinese are simply not willing to spend. Or consider foreigners’ love for Japanese banks. Is that stance sound? Investors need to do some soul-searching after Aozora Bank Ltd.’s US commercial property woes sank its shares. Japan’s decade-long quantitative easing has pushed its financial institutions overseas to chase after yields and margins. Regional lenders, for instance, have become a go-to buyer in the US collateralized loan obligations market. Have foreigners done proper stress tests on Japanese banks? It’s understandable that investors are giving the Nikkei a fresh look. Money has to be deployed somewhere, and China burned them badly in recent years. However, they would do well to remember that Japan also has a long track record of disappointments — just not in the dramatic fashion that China displays. In 2013, foreigners poured in about $155 billion, wholeheartedly embracing Abenomics. Their euphoria was gradually deflated by painfully slow wait for the BOJ to hit its perpetually unattainable 2% inflation target. I am not being a naysayer: Japan might finally be at the end of the tunnel. But investors should revisit history and tread cautiously. China is a value trap, but that doesn’t make Japan a growth story. More From Bloomberg Opinion: The One Bull Market Xi Jinping Cares About: Shuli Ren Butterfly or Godzilla? Chaos and the Falling Yen: John Authers $25 Ski-Slope Ramen a Glimpse of Japan’s Future: Gearoid Reidy Want more Bloomberg Opinion? OPIN <GO>. Or you can subscribe to our daily newsletter. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. To contact the author of this story: Shuli Ren at sren38@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder. Up Next When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Popular in Opinion Dave Lee Amazon Deserves to Be Called Out for Swindling Users Javier Blas The Meltdown in Chocolate Is Coming Tyler Cowen Stock Markets Are Driving a New American Century Parmy Olson Google, Microsoft Will Dominate AI as Computing Costs Surge Shuli Ren When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Opinion Dave Lee Amazon Deserves to Be Called Out for Swindling Users Prime subscriber Wilbert Napoleon is entitled to the ad-free video service he paid for — as are potentially millions of others. February 19, 2024 at 7:00 AM EST By Dave Lee Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion's US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News. Amazon didn’t get much bang for its $1 billion Lord of the Rings series on Prime Video. Photographer: Michael Tran/AFP/Getty Images In this Article AMAZON.COM INC 169.51USD –0.17% Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal LEARN MORE In June 2023, a California man named Wilbert Napoleon renewed his yearly subscription to Amazon Prime at the recently increased price of $139. Part of that deal, as heavily advertised, was Amazon’s promise of “unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming” of entertainment through its Netflix competitor, Prime Video. But by January, Amazon had reneged on part of the deal. It announced that Prime Video would no longer be commercial free unless subscribers — even existing ones who had paid for a yearly plan — paid an extra $2.99 a month. BloombergOpinionNavalny Paid the Price That Russia’s Economy Hasn’tBond Funds Are Not as Safe as You ThoughtBrain Drain From Putin’s Russia Is Far From OverSoftbank’s Arm Isn’t the AI Play You Think It Is The move was part of a mad dash to boost streaming income after years of rampant investment and spiraling blockbuster budgets. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series cost the company $1 billion in production costs but failed to attract much critical or popular acclaim. And, more broadly speaking, Amazon has been looking to crank up its revenues wherever it can while making cuts in other parts of its business. None of that is Napoleon’s problem, of course — so he’s launching a class action on behalf of himself and any other Prime member who rightly feels shortchanged, of which there could be tens of millions.1 “These subscribers should not have to pay an additional $2.99/month for something that they already paid for,” the filing reads. Amazon said it was unable to comment on pending litigation. In the past, these types of lawsuits have proved difficult to win thanks usually to some small print hiding out somewhere. In a separate case in 2020, for instance, a judge threw out claims Amazon had engaged in false advertising because it had removed some Prime Video content. Amazon had made it clear, the judge ruled, that its library of shows and movies was prone to change because of the expiration of licensing agreements or the agreement on new ones. That’s fair enough; generally speaking, when it comes to digital goods, you rarely own anything — instead you buy the right to access material for a limited time. No doubt the terms of service will again come to Amazon’s rescue this time, too. But for a company that lists “customer obsession” as its first leadership principle, it’s a grubby way out. Like almost all businesses that have a subscription component, Amazon likes to encourage users to pay a year up front, offering a small discount as an incentive. It does this because having guaranteed revenue is beneficial — particularly in the streaming market, where churn is notoriously high. It’s also useful in e-commerce, where having a Prime subscription is a key indicator that customers will spend considerably more on Amazon than they might otherwise. But if Amazon wants these benefits, it must stand by its word at the very least. You can’t just go stripping away features and expect customers to not speak up just because you need to better balance your books. The tampering with the product doesn’t stop with ads, either. I’m no AV buff, but among those curious souls who are, it didn’t take long for them to notice that Amazon had disabled Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos surround sound — both of which used to come as standard but now also require the extra $2.99 fee. It means not only do Prime members now get ads in their programs, those programs now likely look and sound worse. Now, Amazon may well argue they’re not shaking down Prime members for any extra money, so this is all fair game. But in another sense, they absolutely are making Prime members pay more — if not with their money then with their valuable attention. Behind all this, of course, is the company’s relentless drive to increase its advertising revenues, now worth more than $46 billion a year. Analysts estimate Amazon stands to generate around $3 billion this year from Prime Video ads alone. Other companies have raised prices but at least had some semblance of fair play. Netflix has added ads to its entry-level subscription, but the change applied only to new and rejoining members. When Disney+ jacked up its prices, they took effect at the customer’s next billing date. People understand prices can’t stay the same forever, but there’s a way to roll out changes without loyal customers feeling they’ve had their pockets picked. As I said, Amazon declined to comment. But I’ve covered the company long enough to hazard a guess at what its arguments will be. It will point to the other benefits of Prime and the fact that other streaming services have raised prices. This is neither here nor there, and certainly not of any relevance to Napoleon and his potential fellow plaintiffs. Amazon sold them one thing but delivered another. More From Bloomberg Opinion: Netflix Hammers Last Nail Into Linear TV Coffin: Paul Hardart Time to Kick Yourself Over Online Shopping: Leticia Miranda Amazon’s New AI Will Make Its Junk Problem Even Worse: Dave Lee Want more Bloomberg Opinion? Terminal readers head to OPIN <GO>. Or you can subscribe to our daily newsletter. Disclosure: I renewed my yearly Prime membership in August 2023, so I'd probably be one of them. View in article This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. To contact the author of this story: Dave Lee at dlee1285@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.net Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion's US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News. Up Next When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Popular in Opinion Dave Lee Amazon Deserves to Be Called Out for Swindling Users Javier Blas The Meltdown in Chocolate Is Coming Tyler Cowen Stock Markets Are Driving a New American Century Parmy Olson Google, Microsoft Will Dominate AI as Computing Costs Surge Shuli Ren When China Is a Value Trap and Japan a Growth Play Terms of Service Trademarks Privacy Policy ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved Careers Made in NYC Advertise Ad Choices Help This article was gifted to you by a Bloo
If only the NIB and CHOC ETNs were still available to short ..... This is going to be a spectacular event!! Don't trade futures. Too risky