Palm oil charts sharpest daily drop in nearly two weeks

Malaysian palm oil futures on Thursday registered their sharpest daily fall in nearly two weeks, weighed down by weaker-performing related edible oils and a technical sell-off. Benchmark palm oil futures for June delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange fell 2.1 percent to 2,771 ringgit ($625.93) a tonne, retreating from the near two-week high of 2,839 ringgit hit in the previous session.
Traded volumes stood at 51,723 lots of 25 tonnes each at the end of the trading day.
"The overseas market is weaker and there has been some technical selling since prices are unable to climb to new highs today," one Kuala Lumpur-based futures trader said, referring to related vegetable oils on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.
Palm oil prices are affected by the performances of competing edible oils in the global vegetable oils market. Soyabean oil on the Chicago Board of Trade slipped as much as 0.8 percent, while the September soyabean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell by up to 1.7 percent.
The September contract for palm olein on the Dalian Commodity Exchange dropped by as much as 2 percent.
Palm oil has been trading range-bound for the past two weeks as slow export demand and uncertainty over output affected sentiment, traders said.
Exports of palm oil products from Malaysia, the world's second-largest producer of the tropical oil, dropped between March 1 and March 20 compared with the corresponding period last month.
Cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services reported a 3 percent drop in shipments, while Societe Generale de Surveillance saw a decline of 7.9 percent.
There are usually seasonal gains in March, but industry players remain uncertain about the extent of recovery. Palm oil trees are still suffering the effects of a crop-damaging El Nino weather event, which reduces yields of fresh fruit bunches and lowers overall output.