Wednesday: China soy futures settle up, continue rebound; CBOT rise
China's soy futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled higher Wednesday, continuing a rebound along with a rise on the Chicago Board of Trade overnight and in other markets.
The benchmark May 2010 soy contract settled RMB20 higher at RMB3,594 a metric tonne, or up 0.6%.
While there was little news for market participants to trade on, the U.S. dollar's weakness, higher crude prices, the rise on CBOT as well as in local markets from equities to metals helped push up major agricultural product prices, said analysts.
However, the trading volume of soy remained low since there was no fresh fund flow into the market due to cautiousness.
The lack of clarity on how the government will deal with the huge soy reserves, which have failed to attract much buying interest in weekly auctions, damped trading interest, said Dong Shuangwei, an analyst with Capital Futures.
The government sold only 29,300 tonnes of soy Wednesday, or 5.9% of the 497,900 tonnes it planned to sell.
The trading volume of all soy contracts declined to 116,536 lots from 151,582 lots Tuesday
The open interest fell 9,132 lots to 286,716 lots Wednesday.
Corn futures settled lower, while soymeal, soyoil and palm oil futures settled up.
Retail vegetable oil prices fell nationwide recently, and analysts said it was due to ample stocks the country earlier imported. Thus, there could be more downward pressure on futures prices in the near term, they added.
Wednesday's settlement prices in yuan a tonne for benchmark contracts and volume for all contracts in lots (one lot is equivalent to 10 tonnes):
Product Contract Settlement Price Change Volume
Soy May 2010 3,594 Up 20 116,536
Corn May 2010 1,744 Dn 2 180,962
Soymeal May 2010 2,781 Up 23 1,311,690
Palm Oil May 2010 6,056 Up 90 394,818
Soyoil May 2010 7,096 Up 58 565,342
