By Dave Sims, Commodity News Service Canada
Winnipeg, Sept. 13 (CNS Canada) – The ICE Futures canola platform suffered modest losses on Thursday, weighed down by technical selling and uncertainty about the state of the crop.
Cold and wet weather across the Prairies has slowed down harvest. Concerns over frost in Alberta and widely varying yields have cast doubt as to the actual size of this year’s crop.
Investors are already looking ahead to September 19, when Statistics Canada will release a production report using satellite imagery.
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“To say what this crop is going to be is tough,” said a trader in Winnipeg. “Yields continue to be all over the place.”
Losses in the Chicago Board of Trade soy complex also undermined prices.
About 11,800 canola contracts traded, which compares with Wednesday when 13,046 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for 5,704 of the contracts traded.
Settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric tonne.
Soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade weakened Thursday, still feeling the effects of Tuesday’s bearish forecast by the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA predicted the soybean carryout would hit 845 million bushels, which was higher than expected.
Trade tensions between the U.S. and China continued to weigh on prices. Although there are rumours the two sides may resume talks soon, nothing concrete has been set.
Mexico has purchased 108,000 tonnes of soybeans for the 2018/19 season.
The corn market ended relatively unchanged in choppy, two-sided trade.
Futures continued to feel pressure from yesterday’s USDA production report, which called for yields of 181.3 bushels per acre. Most traders had yields pegged at just 176 to 178 bpa.
Harvest is going relatively slowly in key parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.
Chicago wheat futures turned lower with speculative selling.
In yesterday’s report, the USDA bumped up its estimate for wheat production in Russia, which was bad news for U.S. exporters. Recent weakness in the Russian currency had made that country’s wheat very cheap.
Fund selling was a feature of the morning activity.
