Palm oil futures rise to 1-week high on export data

February 26, 2009 3:00 GMT+8
Malaysian palm futures rose 1.2 per cent yesterday to finish at a one-week high on the back of good export data and helped by a rally in global stock markets, but the upside was capped by profit-taking, traders said. “Exports are encouraging. We have seen some buying because of that, but people who have heard export numbers on Tuesday have started to get out slowly,” said a trader at a Kuala Lumpur-based brokerage firm.

The benchmark May contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange rose RM23, or 1.2 per cent, to RM1,894 (US$516) per tonne, after rising as high as US1,912 early.
Other traded contracts rose between RM20 and RM27. Overall volume was 11,509 lots of 25 tonnes each.

Exports of Malaysian palm oil products for February 1-25 rose 5 per cent to 1,000,678 tonnes, from 952,478 tonnes shipped between January 1-25, cargo surveyor Intertek Testing Services said yesterday.

Another cargo surveyor Societe Generale de Surveillance estimated exports of Malaysian palm oil products for February 1-25 to have fallen 0.7 per cent to 1,009,236 tonnes from 1,016,477 tonnes shipped between Jan 1 and 25.

The same trader said he is now expecting exports for the whole month to reach about 1.2 million tonnes. “So stocks will go down. These are things supporting the market but when prices move above RM1,900, people start to be a bit cautious,” he said.
The price of the tropical oil, which is used in various products from soap to biodiesel, briefly broke the major resistance level of RM2,000 last week, but failed to hold above it on concerns about demand.