Malaysian palm oil futures declined nearly 1 percent on Friday, charting a third day of losses, as its spread with rival oilseed soya narrowed and on weaker related oils on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange, said traders.
The market fell despite bullish export data from cargo surveyors on Friday, which showed a 17-20 percent rise in palm shipments from Malaysia between January 1-20 versus the previous month.
Benchmark palm oil futures for April delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange fell 1 percent at 3,101 ringgit ($698) a tonne at the end of the trading day. It earlier fell to 3,095 ringgit, palm's lowest level since January 16. Traded volumes stood at 33,124 lots of 25 tonnes each on Friday evening.
"The spread between palm and soyaoil is very narrow now, unless there is a strong movement in soyaoil, palm will find it hard to go up," said a futures trader from Kuala Lumpur.
"Soyaoil holds the key right now."
The March soyabean oil contract on the CBOT is down 0.1 percent at 35.4 cents per pound, or about $780 a tonne.
Another trader added that palm was also tracking weaker performing related oils on Dalian.
The May soyabean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange was down 0.4 percent, while the May contract for Dalian palm olein also fell 0.4 percent.
Palm prices are usually impacted by the movements of related edible oils as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.
Palm oil may test a support at 3,089 ringgit, as it failed to break a resistance at 3,169 ringgit again, according to Wang Tao, a Reuters market analyst for commodities and energy technicals.
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