Malaysian crude palm oil futures fell on Thursday, tracking an earlier decline in soy futures as rains in Argentina provided temporary relief to the drought-stressed crops while investors remained cautious ahead of a key US report. The US Department of Agriculture will issue January world crop data which traders expect to show downgrades of South American crop forecasts.
"The market's tracking soyoil which was down quite bad. On the local front there's not much to lead the market. It's a range trading within 3,200-3,250 ringgit," said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Kuala Lumpur. Benchmark March palm oil futures on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange eased 1 percent to close at 3,202 ringgit ($1,020) per tonne. Traded volumes stood at 17,886 lots of 25 tonnes each, thinner than the usual 25,000 lots.
The Malaysian weather office issued warnings that intermittent rain may cause floods over low-lying areas in Johor and Pahang, key oil palm producing states that account for 30 percent of national output. The Malaysian Palm Oil Board said on Tuesday that Malaysia's opening palm oil stocks for 2012 stayed above the psychological level of 2 million tonnes.
Stock levels fell 1.5 percent from November, better than expectations of a 5.7 percent decline based on a Reuters survey. In other vegetable oil markets, the most active US soyoil for March delivery inched up 0.5 percent after an earlier loss while the most active September 2012 soyoil contract on China's Dalian commodity exchange eased 0.4 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.