August 16, 2007

 

Thursday: China soybean futures settle down on CBOT fall, drought relief

 

 

Soybean futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled lower Thursday, following falls at the Chicago Board of Trade overnight.

 

The benchmark May 2008 soybean contract settled RMB43 lower at RMB3,566 a metric tonne.

 

Total trading volume declined to 310,014 lots from 345,398 lots Wednesday. One lot is equivalent to 10 tonnes.

 

Rain in northeast China's major soybean and corn producing regions, which had been suffering from a drought, also gave traders a chance to take profits.

 

About 83% of Heilongjiang's drought-hit area was relieved by heavy rains from last Wednesday to Saturday, Xinhua News Agency said earlier this week.

 

Another roughly 1.25 million hectares, mostly in the west of the province, was still facing drought, it said.

 

However, there isn't much room for domestic soybean prices to fall as soyoil and soymeal demand will be strong before the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, said Lu Xin, an analyst at COFCO Futures Co.

 

Soymeal futures and soyoil futures settled mostly lower.

 

The benchmark January 2008 soymeal contract settled RMB43 lower at RMB2,775/tonne, and the benchmark January 2008 soyoil contract settled RMB92 lower at RMB8,168/tonne.

 

Corn futures also settled lower.

 

The benchmark May 2008 contract settled RMB26 lower at RMB1,566/tonne.

 

Trading volume for all corn contracts declined to 644,706 lots from 659,662 lots Wednesday.