By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada Inc.

Winnipeg – August 16/12 – Canola futures on the ICE Canada trading platform finished Thursday’s session mixed after trading on both sides of the plus/minus line during the day. The price advances were exhibited in the three nearby months while the remainder of the contracts posted declines.

Much of the price movement in canola was dictated by the up and down roller-coaster ride experienced by the CBOT soybean complex during the session, market watchers said. The thinness of the volume in canola allowed for light buying or selling to easily push the commodity either up or down, brokers said.

Support in the nearby canola months canola came from steady chart-based speculative buying interest and the buying back of previously sold positions by a variety of market players. Talk of some fresh export demand being put on the books for nearby shipment also influenced some price support for canola. However, no export business could be confirmed.

Commercials were also buyers of canola, with most of that interest said to be pricing old export sales to Japan.

The early gains in CBOT soybeans had underpinned canola but the downturn in those values by the close restricted the upside in canola and took the nearby canola futures off their highs.

Continued strength in the Canadian dollar and steady elevator company hedge selling, in anticipation of increased farmer deliveries of canola over the next couple of weeks as the harvest on the Canadian prairies picks up steam, also undermined values.

Some early position evening ahead of Statistics Canada’s first production report on August 22, was also a feature of the activity.

There were an estimated 9,579 canola contracts traded Thursday, down fractionally from the 9,675 contracts that changed hands during the previous session.

There were no milling wheat, durum or barley contracts traded.

Prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.