Thursday: China soy futures settle up, boosted by equities rebound
Soy futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled higher Thursday, stimulated by a strong rebound in local equity markets.
The benchmark May 2010 soy contract settled RMB29 higher at RMB3,627 a metric tonne.
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended up 4.8% at 2845.02 Thursday after hitting an intraday high of 2854.16 as Beijing's reiteration of official support for its stock market and widespread talk that the securities regulator may slow the pace of new share offerings boosted demand for major bluechips.
The big rise in stocks helped push commodity futures generally higher, although the rebound in agricultural products lagged behind those in metals, which are more sensitive to macroeconomic development.
Analysts said there isn't much room for soy and soy products to tumble in the near term, given earlier accumulated declines, unless there's fresh news to trigger a big fall.
Meanwhile, soy prices will be supported as the government is also unlikely to cut soy sales prices during its weekly auctions ahead of new arrivals of soy that will be harvested in two-weeks' time, as it aims to protect farmers' profits through high soy prices, said Xu Zhimou, an analyst with Ruida Futures Brokerage Co.
Trading volume for all soy contracts rose to 319,876 lots from 185,922 lots Wednesday.
Open interest rose 18,424 lots to 306,168 lots.
Corn futures settled higher, but soymeal futures, soyoil futures and palm oil futures all settled lower.
Thursday'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 May 2010 3,627 Up 29 319,876
Corn May 2010 1,752 Up 10 225,154
Soymeal May 2010 2,790 Dn 4 1,719,340
Palm Oil May 2010 6,050 Dn 42 455,906
Soyoil May 2010 7,150 Dn 28 764,978
