Cocoa price squeeze as UK equities’ struggles continue

Will chocolate prices leave us bitter over Easter?

In the spirit of this being the Easter weekend, and in an attempt to a rail against one NHS boss’s pointless and pious advice against people eating ‘a whole Easter egg in one go’, we start this week with chocolate.

Or, more specifically, the nasty taste that shoppers will get at the tills this weekend due to the astronomical rise in the price of coca, the raw ingredient of chocolate.

Prices for unglamorous commodities, not usually the lead item in a weekly business and economics round-up, hit another all-time high on Tuesday.

Having traditionally changed hands for between $2,000 and $4,000 per tonne, this week we saw prices in the popular ingredient break $10,000 for the first time in its history.

Futures in the commodity—which are a contract to buy…