KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Friday to record their first weekly fall in four, weighed down weak soy contracts, and as the market grappled with abundant supplies of rival oilseeds.
Top industry analysts painted a gloomy outlook for palm for the second half of the year at a conference this week and as a result the Malaysian contract, which sets the tone for global prices, pulled back from an eight-month high.
The benchmark May contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange had inched down 1.5 percent to 2,290 ringgit ($627) a tonne by Friday's close.
For the week, the contract is down 0.7 percent, notching its first weekly fall since mid-February.
Total traded volume stood at 50,596 lots of 25 tonnes each, above the usual 35,000 lots.
"(It's) soyoil basically, and the huge worldwide crops," said a trader with a commodities brokerage in Malaysia. Palm typically tracks soyoil markets as the edible oil is a common food and fuel substitute.
The most active May soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange lost 1.9 percent in late Asian trade, while the US soyoil contract for May was down 0.4 percent. It had slid as much as 2 percent to 31.54 cents a pound in the previous session.
Technical factors were slightly bullish. Palm oil may hover above support at 2,288 ringgit per tonne for a day or rebound moderately to 2,320 ringgit, Reuter’s market analyst Wang Tao said.
A Reuter’s poll of seven planters, traders and analysts on Friday forecast palm oil stocks at a median 1.67 million tonnes at the end of February, down 5.4 percent from January and the weakest since June.
Elsewhere, South American soybeans are expected to flood the market as a record harvest peaks and supply bottlenecks ease after a truck drivers' strike in Brazil petered out. Soybean prices have fallen 4.5 percent this week.
Market players are keeping a watch on Argentina, the world's No.3 soybean exporter and supplier of soyoil, after heavy rain over the past week flooded some northern soy-growing areas.
The floods led the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange to say it might lower its forecast of 57 million tonnes for the 2014/15 harvest.
Brent crude oil rose to around $61 a barrel on Friday as fighting in Libya and Iraq stoked output worries, while traders kept a close eye on Iran nuclear talks that could eventually bring more supply to world markets.
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