Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Tuesday after four straight sessions of gains on weakness in related edible oils, while shipment data from cargo surveyors did little to support the market. The benchmark palm oil contract for January delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was down 0.9 percent at 2,815 ringgit ($665.25) a tonne after posting its biggest intraday percentage drop in three weeks.
It has risen 4.5 percent so far this month, charting a third monthly gain in four. Traded volumes stood at 35,640 lots of 25 tonnes each at the close of trade. "The market is down on a correction and due to externals. They didn't go up, so palm followed," said a futures trader from Kuala Lumpur, referring to soyaoil on the US Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and China's Dalian Commodity Exchange.
"Exports also came in within market expectations," he said. Malaysian palm oil shipments in October rose 2.5 percent from the previous month, according to data from cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services. Another cargo surveyor, Societe Generale de Surveillance, showed export gains of 2.3 percent for the same time period. Gains in exports have been slowing since mid-September as demand ebbs after the major festivities of Diwali in India and the Mid-Autumn festival in China.
Palm oil usage usually slows during winter in markets such as China and Europe as the tropical oil solidifies in cold temperatures. In other related edible oils, the December soyabean oil contract on the CBOT fell 0.2 percent, while the January soyabean oil contract on the Dalian was down 0.3 percent. The January palm olein contract on the Dalian was slightly up 0.1 percent. Prices of palm oil are impacted by movements in related oils, as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.
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