The Chicago Board of Trade rough rice market ended sharply lower on Tuesday, at the day's lows as speculative selling escalated late, traders said. Rice was pressured by the weakness in the other CBOT markets, which tanked on outlooks for improving crop weather.
The market got off to a weak start amid speculative selling, drifting lower throughout the session. Selling by local traders picked up by the close, pushing prices to the day's lows, traders said. July rice settled 19 cents lower at $10.62 per hundredweight.
September was off 18 cents at $11.02 and November was 20 cents weaker at $11.28. Local traders were the featured late sellers. There was little news in rice to stir much trade interest, keeping volume light. An estimated 508 futures and 11 options traded, thinner than it's been in several days.
On Monday, 1,862 futures and 108 options traded. The US rice crop was in good shape. The US Agriculture Department rated 74 percent of the crop as good to excellent on Monday's crop report.
While it had deteriorated slightly in the past week, down 2 points in the good-to-excellent categories it was up considerably from a year ago when only 56 percent of the crop were in good-to-excellent condition.