July 21, 2009

Soy futures traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange settled slightly lower Tuesday as the market consolidated with demand remaining sluggish while the news front stayed quiet.

 

The benchmark May 2010 soy contract settled RMB3 a metric tonne lower at RMB3,510/tonne.

 

Low cash prices didn't attract much volume due to weak demand and traders stayed on the sidelines on expectations that prices will fall further, said an analyst with a foreign trading house.

 

A weakening dollar may also help support commodities in general, she added.

 

Trading of the benchmark contract was within a tight range of RMB31/tonne.

 

Trading volume for all soy contracts declined to 109,122 lots from 147,970 lots Monday.

 

Open interest rose 2,820 lots to 357,672 lots.

 

Corn futures settled slightly lower, while soymeal futures, palm oil futures and soyoil futures settled slightly higher.

 

Ongoing government sales of corn had little impact on the market as demand is sluggish. The auction prices were around the same level as cash prices, indicating that the government is happy with the current price level, said Wang Cheng, an analyst with Nanhua Futures Co.

 

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

                                             

Contract       Settlement      Price        Change      Volume

Soy              May 2010       3,510        Dn    3       109,122

Corn             Jan 2010       1,615         Dn    2        37,884

Soymeal       Jan 2010        2,837        Up     3   1,297,756

Palm Oil        Jan 2010        5,810        Up     2      562,462

Soyoil           Jan 2010        7,174        Up   10      841,348