Malaysian palm oil futures were up slightly on Tuesday as the market traded mostly sideways, looking for new catalysts. The benchmark palm oil contract for December delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was up 0.14 percent at 2,160 ringgit ($521.74) a tonne. Trading volumes stood at 42,844 lots of 25 tonnes each. "Palm could have gone higher, but there's a lot of liquidation in the nearby contracts rolling over to the forward months," a Kuala Lumpur-based trader said. The trader expects the futures contract to continue trading sideways until new industry data and forecasts are available.
Another trader said the market was waiting for new leads while rising stockpiles continue to be worrisome, keeping the futures contract range-bound at 2,137-2,200 ringgit per tonne.
Malaysian palm oil inventories rose to a seven-month high of 2.49 million tonnes in August, official data from a Malaysian industry regulator showed.
Industry analyst Dorab Mistry also pegged Malaysia's peak end-stocks at 3-3.3 million tonnes for the year, while estimating that Indonesia's inventories are currently close to 5 million tonnes and will keep rising.
In other related oils, the Chicago September soyabean oil contract was last down 0.4 percent. The Dalian January soyabean oil contract and January palm oil contract were untraded as the Dalian Commodity Exchange was closed for national holidays in China. Palm oil prices are affected by movements of other edible oils as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.
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