Today's Major Market Move: Coffee Futures Drop Over 10% in March

While natural gas prices have been hit hard again this month and just recently made a new all time low, the hardest hit commodity in March has been coffee. Coffee futures are down 10.3% month to date and are down over 18% year to date. Here are the top 10 front month commodity futures when ranked by declining prices for March:

Click here to go to the live table.

The recent softness in prices is in large part due to a bumper Brazilian crop which is expected to keep prices constrained for the next six months. More color from the Business Recorder:

Andrea Illy said he expected coffee production from Brazil's upcoming 2012/13 coffee crop to reach 55 million 60-kg bags, the same estimate he had given late last year for the harvest in the world's top coffee producer that starts in around two months.

"Brazil's harvest will be good in terms of quality and quantity," Illy said.

The natural thing to do at this point in the post would be to put up a comparison chart of coffee futures prices against Starbucks' (ticker: SBUX) stock price. Since we're not one to fight against nature, here goes:

Click here to go to the live chart.

That's a pretty tight inverse correlation starting in October of last year. The 65% gain since the beginning of 2011 made SBUX the 16th best performing stock in the S&P 500. SBUX has now more than made up for the decline it suffered back in 2008 and is currently trading at all-time highs.