By Dave Sims and Phil Franz-Warkentin, Commodity News Service Canada
Winnipeg, June 13 – THE ICE Futures Canada canola market finished slightly higher in choppy trading Monday due to speculative trading.
“It’s fooling around with the US markets but it’s not tending to go too far either way. When US markets are strong canola will lag behind them, when US markets are weak it will lag behind them,” he noted.
The Canadian dollar was slightly weaker relative to its US counterpart which made canola more attractive to buyers.
Read Also
North American Grain/Oilseed Review: Canola falls back, wheat rises
Glacier FarmMedia | MarketsFarm — Canola futures on the Intercontinental Exchange retreated further on Tuesday despite entering positive territory for…
World-wide oilseed supplies are still healthy, but not as massive as they typically have been, according to a report.
However, losses in the vegetable oil market and US soy limited the gains.
Farmer selling is slowly winding into gear as farmers are done seeding and there are relatively high prices to take advantage of.
The market seems locked into a sideways range as traders wait for weather issues to develop, according to the trader.
Around 25,451 canola contracts were traded on Monday, which
compares with Friday when around 25,720 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for about 12,560 of the contracts traded.
Milling wheat, barley and durum were all untraded.
Settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric tonne.
SOYBEAN futures at the Chicago Board of Trade were down by two to nine cents per bushel on Monday, retreating from earlier gains as prices ran into technical resistance.
The nearby July contract traded just below the psychological US$12.00 per bushel mark at one point during the session, before retreating.
Ideas that US soybean acres will be above earlier estimates added to the softer tone, as private forecaster Informa Economics raised its estimate for the size of this year’s US crop to 83.8 million acres. That was up by 800,000 acres from an earlier estimate.
However, there are still enough weather concerns across parts of the Midwest to provide some underlying support.
SOYOIL and SOYMEAL futures were down on Monday.
CORN futures in Chicago were up by three to nine cents per bushel on Monday, with spreading against soybeans behind some of the strength as investors sold soybeans and bought corn.
Informa lowered its estimate on planted corn area in the US to 92.6 million acres, which was down from the 93.4 million acres forecast in May.
Hot and dry weather forecasts across the US corn belt added to the firmer tone.
WHEAT futures in Chicago were narrowly mixed on Monday, although the bias was lower in the most active front months.
Seasonal harvest pressure kept the bias lower in wheat, while the large world supplies also continued to overhang the market.
The advances in corn did provide some spillover support, helping temper the declines in wheat.
– Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, is set to end its latest round of local wheat buying after hitting the 4.0 million tonne target of domestic wheat purchases set in April. The country bought 4.8 million tonnes of domestic wheat during the two month period.
– India may need to import up to five million tonnes of wheat in 2016/17, according to research from Indian agri-business ITC. That would compare with wheat imports of only 500,000 tonnes the previous year, and would be the largest in a decade as poor monsoon seasons in recent years have seen the country’s own government stocks dwindle.
