March 19, 2008
Wednesday: China soy futures settle mostly up, soyoil down for 3rd day
Soybean futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled mostly up slightly Wednesday, boosted by gains in soybean futures in the Chicago Board of Trade overnight.
The benchmark January 2009 soybean contract rose CNY11 to settle at CNY4,235 a metric ton, after trading between CNY4,186/ton and CNY4,310/ton.
"Consolidation is likely to continue in the near term, and people's attention is on funds' moves, both domestic and abroad, which will add to the volatility," said Gao Yanrong, an analyst at Dalu Futures.
Meanwhile, market participants are also closely eying the change of acreage of soybean and corn, which could determine a longer-term trend, Gao added.
Soymeal futures settled mostly up slightly, but soyoil futures settled sharply down for the third session in a row on losses in CBOT soyoil overnight amid ideas that Asian vegetable oil markets have peaked.
Corn futures settled up slightly, due to higher cash prices in the major production regions in the northeast.
Meanwhile, analysts shrugged off news about China's total grain reserves.
"People don't pay much attention to that. We don't have comparative figures or details about different products after all," said an analyst in Shanghai.
China's Premier Wen Jiabao said in a press conference Tuesday that the country's grain reserves are at 150 million-200 million tons, adding "we are very confident (that we can) control the overly rapid growth in (overall) prices."
Surging food prices were largely blamed for pushing domestic consumer price index growth to a near 12-year high of 8.7% in February.
Wednesday's settlement prices in yuan a metric tonne and volume for all contracts in lots:
Contract Price Change Volume
Soybeans Jan 2009 4,235 Up 11 1,463,740
Soymeal Sep 2008 3,334 Up 35 891,082
Soyoil Sep 2008 10,790 Dn 250 642,558
Corn Sep 2008 1,779 Up 18 1,062,468
Palm Oil May 2008 10,180 Dn 198 58,152
