KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures made their biggest single-day climb in over a week after sinking to a three-week low earlier on Wednesday, as weak demand generally kept prices under pressure.
At Wednesday's close, the February benchmark palm oil contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives exchange was up 1.09 percent at 2,317 ringgit ($528.03) per tonne, its biggest climb in percentage terms since Nov. 9. Earlier it fell to 2,274 ringgit, its lowest since October 27.
"The market is still holding up though there is some pressure on prices. It is depressed as demand is not coming in," said a trader based in Kuala Lumpur.
Despite the latest cargo surveyor export data showing 2-4
percent gains for the first 15 days of November compared with a
month before, the trader said fundamental factors for the market
were still not strong.
"I don't think that data is going to help, (it rose) maybe
because there was a backlog of shipments. Stocks, production and
demand still don't look good," he said.
Malaysia's palm oil stocks rose to a near 15-year high at
the end of October following a surprise rise in output by the
world's second-largest producer, dampening benchmark prices for
palm.
Indonesia's output, however, is seen dropping slightly in
October from the previous month, according to a Reuters survey,
due to the effects of choking haze.
Traded volume stood at 45,811 lots of 25 tonnes each, well
above the roughly 35,000 lots usually traded daily.
Palm oil is expected to drop to 2,233 ringgit per tonne, as
it has pierced below a support at 2,291 ringgit, said Wang Tao,
a Reuters market analyst for commodities and energy technicals.
In competing vegetable oil markets, the U.S. December soyoil
contract gained 0.8 percent while the January soybean oil
contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange gained 0.15
percent.
Palm, soy and crude oil prices at 1128 GMT
Contract Month Last Change Low High Volume
MY PALM OIL DEC5 2168 +36.00 2113 2170 1105
MY PALM OIL JAN6 2247 +24.00 2203 2254 8062
MY PALM OIL FEB6 2317 +25.00 2274 2325 19980
CHINA PALM OLEIN JAN6 4146 -4.00 4112 4174 676284
CHINA SOYOIL JAN6 5468 +8.00 5454 5508 381060
CBOT SOY OIL DEC5 27.69 -0.10 27.32 27.72 10385
INDIA PALM OIL NOV5 388.00 -0.10 385.40 388.20 712
INDIA SOYOIL NOV5 596.50 +0.60 593.60 598.00 1795
NYMEX CRUDE DEC5 41.43 +0.76 40.91 41.55 25521
Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne
CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound
Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne
India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg
Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel
($1 = 4.3880 ringgit)
($1 = 66.2775 Indian rupees)
($1 = 6.3834 Chinese yuan renminbi)
- Reuters
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