By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada
February 25, 2013
WINNIPEG – Canola futures on the ICE Canada trading platform finished Monday’s session mixed with the nearby months down and most of the deferred months higher. Steady commodity fund and speculative liquidation orders, tied in part to the sell-off in the outside oilseed markets, were linked to the declines in the old-crop contracts, industry watchers said.
Sharp losses were posted overnight in Malaysian palm oil and European rapeseed futures. CBOT soybean and soyoil futures also experienced significant losses on Monday.
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Some of the downward price action seen in the oilseed sector was associated with the arrival of additional beneficial precipitation in the soybean growing regions of Argentina on the weekend.
A small pick up in old crop deliveries of canola into the cash pipeline added to the bearish sentiment in the commodity, traders said. The taking of profits after last week’s run up in value also was evident and further encouraged the downward price slide, brokers said.
The losses in canola were restricted in part by scale-down domestic crusher demand and the pricing of old export business.
Canola declines in the deferred months were kept in check by the reluctance of farmers in western Canada to price new crop canola, traders said. Some concern about lower seeded area this spring also generated some support for the new crop months, brokers said.
The continued downswing in the value of the Canadian dollar also provided some underlying support to canola.
Spreading continued to be a feature of the activity in canola and helped to bolster the volume total.
There were an estimated 30,263 canola contracts traded Monday, up from the 22,896 contracts that changed hands during the previous session.
No milling wheat, durum or barley contracts were traded.
Prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.
