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Futures settle as Floyd hits
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September 14, 1999: 4:39 p.m. ET
Impact in commodity markets being felt already as storm strikes Florida coast
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Hurricane Floyd's potential impact on futures markets was already factored in Tuesday as the storm packing 140-mile-per-hour winds neared an assault on the Florida coast.
What has been typically a battered commodity market recently has gotten a jolt upward amid the concerns Floyd could cut output of agricultural goods, hurting market supplies and inflating prices.
And crude oil prices, which have revived this summer, tend to waver if storms threaten the key Gulf of Mexico region. Crude oil prices didn't move much Tuesday as Floyd seemed poised to head up the Atlantic coast instead of barreling into the gulf
The gulf is a focal point of U.S. production and a hub for global delivery. The Nymex crude oil futures contract for delivery in October, currently the most-active contract, settled down 33 cents at 23.88 a barrel.
Orange juice also saw its recent price run-up plateau a bit as the storm struck. Florida is the nation's top orange-growing state.
In New York Board of Trade trading Tuesday, frozen concentrated orange juice futures due for December delivery slipped 0.25 cents to settle at 96.75 cents a pound, a day after rallying 1.55 cents.
And cotton futures for December delivery on the NYBOT fell 0.9 cents to settle at 53.95 cents per pound, after gaining 0.68 cents Monday, capping a rally of the past few days.
"We had a pretty big run-up in last few days because of Hurricane Floyd," Sharon Johnson, cotton trader at Frank Schneider & Co. in Atlanta, said. "We hit 55.45 and then just ran out of steam," she said, referring to the contract's intra-day high.
Concern has sprung that part of the cotton crop in the Carolinas will be washed out by Floyd. The two states account for 1.6 million pounds, she said, and that's about 10 percent of the total U.S. output.
But the damage may have been done already. "Does it mean a lot? No, because we've already priced it in, but long term it could mean a little," she added.
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