KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures declined for a second straight session on Tuesday after weaker export data from a cargo surveyor prompted traders to sell.
Palm price movements have been volatile in the two previous trading sessions. Palm dropped more than 4 percent on Monday to post its sharpest intraday fall in over four months, tracking the weaker performance of rival oils on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange following talk of Chinese government measures to curb speculation.
Monday's slide came after palm rose to a four-year high of 3,089 ringgit on Friday due to a fall in the Malaysian currency, which makes the tropical oil cheaper for foreign currency holders.
Benchmark palm oil futures for January on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange were down 1 percent at 2,824 ringgit ($651) a tonne at the end of the trading day on Tuesday.
Traded volumes stood at 61,843 lots of 25 tonnes, above the 2015 daily average of 44,600 lots.
"The market is down mainly on estimate numbers," said a futures trader from Kuala Lumpur, referring to the export data from cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services on Tuesday.
It showed a 17 percent decline in Malaysian palm oil shipments in the first half of November from the corresponding period last month.
In other related vegetable oils, the January soybean oil contract on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange slipped 0.8 percent while the January contract for palm olein on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange declined 2.8 percent.
The December soybean oil contract on the Chicago Board of Trade edged 0.03 percent lower.
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