KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures extended gains into a second session on Tuesday, reaching a more than one-week high, supported by gains in rival soyoil on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and China's Dalian Commodity Exchange.
Benchmark palm oil futures for February delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange were up 0.7 percent at 2,940 ringgit ($664) a tonne at the midday break. They earlier climbed to an intraday high of 2,944 ringgit, their strongest since Nov. 11.
Traded volumes stood at 8,365 lots of 25 tonnes each.
Gains mainly tracked external markets in thin volume, though a slightly stronger ringgit weighed on investor sentiment, said a trader from Kuala Lumpur.
"It looks like the market is trying to cover the gap at 2,963 ringgit in the absence of bearish news."
Weakness in the ringgit, the currency that palm oil is traded in, usually makes the tropical oil cheaper for foreign buyers. It strengthened slightly from a 13-month low reached on Monday before trading 0.2 percent lower at 4.4260 per dollar by noon.
The Malaysian currency has lost nearly 5 percent since Nov. 9 following the US elections and after the central bank clamped down on offshore ringgit trading.
The Malaysian central bank said it would implement "prompt supervisory intervention" against individuals or banks who traded ringgit in the offshore non-deliverable forward (NDF) market or adopted its prices.
Palm oil is expected to test a resistance at 2,963 ringgit per tonne, a break above which could lead to a gain to the next resistance at 3,002 ringgit, Wang Tao, a Reuters market analyst for commodities and energy technicals, said.
In related vegetable oils, the December soybean oil contract on the CBOT rose 0.2 percent, while the January soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange gained 0.8 percent.
In related vegetable oils, the January contract for palm olein on the Dalian Commodity Exchange was up 0.7 percent.
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