Rough rice futures on the Chicago Board of Trade settled sharply higher on Tuesday, rising to one-month highs on technical buying and slipover strength from wheat futures, traders said. "There wasn't a ton of bullish news. It's primarily a technical play," said Jack Scoville, an analyst with the Price Futures Group in Chicago.
July rice settled up 33 cents, or 3 percent, at $10.75 per hundredweight, breaking through its 100- and 200-day moving averages. September ended up 28-1/2 cents at $11.11 and November was up 25-1/2 cents at $11.38. Volume was heavy, estimated by the CBOT at 3,181 rice futures and 33 options.
Speculative buying emerged at the bell and lifted July and November into buy-stops. Much of the buying stemmed from the electronic trading platform, CBOT rice traders said.
Traders noted commercial selling in the session from Man Financial, while Rosenthal Collins and RJ O'Brien were noted sellers later in the day. The July-September spread traded lightly at 36 to 37 cents. Dry conditions remained a worry in parts of the US rice production region although Arkansas received some welcome rain, Scoville said.
The US Department of Agriculture said in its weekly crop progress report late on Monday that 76 percent of the US rice crop was rated in good to excellent condition, up from 71 percent the previous week.
In world news, the Philippines is considering reducing the rice import volume it specified at a June 6 tender to 280,000 tonnes from the original 300,000 tonnes following a review of local output, a government official said. India is likely to export 4.4 million tonnes of rice in 2007, almost the same as a year ago, the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organisation said in its latest outlook.
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