By Dave Sims, Commodity News Service Canada
Winnipeg, January 11 (CNS Canada) – Canola contracts on the ICE Futures Canada platform continued to trend lower on Thursday, as losses in the U.S. soy complex weighed down the market.
Vegetable oil markets were also weaker, which undermined prices.
Trading volumes were thin as participants waited for tomorrow’s USDA supply and demand report.
The canola market was mostly directionless and reliant on other oilseeds to move it around, according to a trader in Winnipeg.
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“Markets that are kind of quiet and drifting lower don’t attract a lot of interest,” he noted.
However, a recent drop in the value of the Canadian currency helped prop up canola.
A lack of snow cover in parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta has some farmers concerned.
Around 10,301 canola contracts were traded on Thursday, which compares with Wednesday when around 10,500 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for 4,316 of the contracts traded.
Settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric tonne.
Soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade ended four to five cents weaker on expectations that tomorrow’s USDA supply and demand report will raise yield and production numbers for the U.S. crop.
Brazil’s agricultural wing Conab pegged the country’s soybean crop at 110.4 million tonnes, which is over a million tonne more than last month’s estimate.
Weekly U.S. export sales were near the low end of expectations.
Corn futures finished mostly unchanged as traders hung on the sidelines, waiting for the release of tomorrow’s report.
The U.S. ethanol sector is in a mini-slump right now as higher costs for natural gas, due to the cold weather, have slowed production over the past few weeks.
Conab raised its production forecast for the crop in Brazil to 92.3 million tonnes, a slight increase over the previous estimate.
The Chicago wheat market ended one cent weaker on Thursday, pressured by disappointing U.S. weekly export sales. Analysts had been expecting sales to fall within a range of 250,000 to 450,000 tonnes but they came in at just 71,500, a new marketing year low.
Commercial buyers were mostly absent from the market on Thursday as they waited for Friday’s numbers.
The European Union bought 1.035 million tonnes of wheat from Ukraine.
