By Terryn Shiells, Commodity News Service Canada
January 8, 2014
WINNIPEG – ICE Futures Canada Canola contracts closed sharply lower again on Wednesday, moving to fresh lows in the nearby contracts.
Some of the weakness was linked to spillover pressure from the declines seen in outside oilseeds, including the Chicago soy complex, Malaysian palm oil and European rapeseed futures.
A bearish technical bias was also responsible for some of the price weakness, as was a pickup in farmer hedging in the futures market, analysts said.
Expectations of very large Canadian canola ending stocks for 2013/14, due to the huge supplies and problems moving the crop within Canada’s grain handling system, continued to overhang the market.
However, the sharply weaker Canadian dollar helped to limit the losses, as did strong crush margins.
About 35,717 canola contracts were traded on Wednesday, which compares with Tuesday when 19,790 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for 27,636 of the trades.
Milling wheat, durum and barley prices were untraded and unchanged.
Settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.
