Just caught some interesting cocoa market moves this week. March futures on both NY and London exchanges popped on Tuesday, with NY up about 2% and London up over 3%. Seems like traders are covering shorts as Ivory Coast shipments are lagging behind last year's pace. The latest cocoa news shows farmers only moved 1.23 million metric tons to ports so far this season, which is down from the year before.

What's wild is that despite this supply slowdown, cocoa prices got hammered last Friday hitting multi-year lows. Apparently there's just too much global cocoa supply sitting around, and demand is pretty weak. Major chocolate makers are seeing lower volumes as consumers keep balking at chocolate prices. Even the grinding reports across Europe, Asia, and North America are all showing weakness.

There's some offsetting factors though - favorable weather in West Africa could boost the upcoming harvest, and Nigeria (the fifth-largest producer) is looking at lower output this year. So mixed signals in the cocoa news cycle right now. The market seems to be bouncing between supply concerns and demand worries.