Just caught that cocoa prices bounced a bit on Thursday - NY cocoa up 0.65% and London cocoa up about 1% on some dollar weakness triggering short covering. But honestly, the broader picture for cocoa still looks pretty rough. We've been seeing lows not hit in 2 years, and there's a lot of structural headwinds here. Global cocoa supplies are pretty abundant right now, and demand is just not there. Barry Callebaut reported a 22% drop in cocoa sales volume last quarter because consumers are basically refusing to pay those chocolate prices anymore. The grinding numbers across Europe, Asia, and North America all came in weak too. What's interesting is that West Africa has favorable growing conditions going into their main harvest season, and cocoa pod counts are running 7% above the five-year average. So we could be looking at even more supply hitting the market. Nigeria's exports are down and production is expected to fall, which is one of the few supportive factors. But even with that, the global cocoa surplus forecasts keep getting revised. We went from expectations of a huge deficit a couple years back to now looking at surpluses in the 250-300k MT range. Inventories at US ports also just hit a 2.5-month high, which is bearish for prices. The dollar weakness gave cocoa a small lift on Thursday, but until demand improves or supply tightens materially, I don't see a strong case for cocoa rallying much from here.

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