The New York Board of Trade's front-month March cocoa contract rose $8 to finish that day at $1,547 a tonne, after moving in a quiet $30 range, between $1,540 to $1,570. May cocoa gained $7 at $1,552 and the rest of the board closed $6 to $8 higher.
Brokers said the action was "choppy" in the first hour of trade as a speculative and local short-covering rally lifted prices up to the $1,570 level, before fund selling moved in and was being fed in throughout the balance of the session.
"The market was kind of pinned at the $1,545 level for most of the day," said one. In the short-term, analysts believe the market may chop around in its current range, with the chance for a corrective bounce in the part of January.
"The market is getting itself into a bit of an oversold condition and it needs some kind of correction before we begin to move higher," said one. "I think we'll trade between $1,530 and $1,650 in the next couple of weeks," he added.
In other news, cocoa arrivals at ports in Ivory Coast reached 506,310 tonnes between October 1 and December 26 this year, according to an estimate by major exporters on Thursday.
That compared with 548,815 tonnes delivered to ports during the same period of the 2003/04 season, industry data showed, pointing to a relative pick-up in arrivals after a slow start.
Technical analysts pegged support in March cocoa at Wednesday's low at $1,535, followed by $1,512, while resistance was placed at $1,601 and then between a gap of $1,628 and $1,650.
Estimated final cocoa volume reached 5,545 lots, compared with Wednesday's official count of 9,405 lots.
Open interest grew 884 lots to 117,425 lots as of December 29.