June 30, 2009

Soy futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled higher Tuesday, ahead of the release later in the global day of a possibly unfavorable U.S. Department of Agriculture report.

 

The benchmark January 2010 soy contract settled RMB16 a metric tonne higher at RMB3,653/tonne, or up 0.4%.

 

The market has consolidated during the past two to three weeks on expectations of an increase in soy acreage estimates by the USDA in its March prospective plantings report, and some mid- to long-term investors think it's time for prices to rise following the digestion of the unfavorable news, said Yu Haifeng, an analyst with Tianqi Futures.

 

The USDA is scheduled to issue its key acreage and quarterly stocks reports Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. EDT, or 1230 GMT.

 

However, analysts said traders were mostly sidelined pending clearer guidance from the USDA report, as they didn't have the confidence to enter the market aggressively.

 

The benchmark soy contract traded in a very tight range of RMB3,631-RMB3,665/tonne Tuesday.

 

Trading volume of all soy contracts declined to 175,052 lots from 179,428 lots Monday.

 

Open interest rose 5,634 lots to 344,070 lots Tuesday.

 

Corn futures settled little changed, while soymeal futures, soyoil futures and palm oil futures settled lower.

 

Following are Tuesday's settlement prices in yuan a metric tonne for benchmark contracts and volume for all contracts in lots (One lot is equivalent to 10 tonnes):

                        

Contract    Settlement    Price        Change      Volume

Soy           Jan 2010      3,653        Up   16      175,052

Corn          Jan 2010      1,628        Up    1        67,456

Soymeal    Jan 2010      2,895        Dn    5    1,019,258

Palm Oil     Jan 2010      6,108        Dn   16      422,384

Soyoil        Jan 2010      7,382        Dn   20      753,846