By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada
May 24, 2013
Winnipeg – Canola contracts on the ICE Futures Canada platform were trading at mainly higher levels at 10:33 CDT Friday morning with only the nearby July future experiencing a price decline. Much of the activity consisted of the realignment of spreads between July and a number of other months, market watchers said.
Much of the spread realignment was being conducted by speculative and commodity fund accounts, brokers said.
Some of the activity in canola also was tied to the evening up of positions ahead of the US long holiday weekend. US commodity markets will be closed on Monday in observance of Memorial Day.
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The downswing in the value of the Canadian dollar on Friday helped to underpin canola futures with strength also stemming from concerns about precipitation forecast for the Canadian prairies. While good seeding progress is believed to have been made in western Canada, planting was far from finished and rain delays now were not seen as a good thing, brokers said.
Some support for the deferred canola contracts also came from the advances posted by the deferred CBOT soybean contracts, traders said.
Some of the weakness in the July canola future also came from news that domestic crushers have now started to price needs off the November future instead of July.
As of 10:33 CDT, about 10,832 canola contracts had traded.
Milling wheat, durum and barley contracts were unchanged and untraded.
Prices in Canadian dollars per metric ton at 10:33 CDT:
