By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada

Winnipeg – October 30/12 – CNS – Canola contracts on the ICE Futures Canada platform were trading at reluctantly higher price levels at 10:51 CDT Tuesday morning with the strength associated with the advances experienced by CBOT soybean and soyoil futures, market watchers said.

Some light commercial demand, said to be pricing old export business to Japan, also influenced some of the price gains in canola. Concerns about tight canola supplies in Canada also remained an underpinning price influence.

The upside in canola was being restricted by the taking of profits and by the continued deterioration in crush margins for domestic processors, traders said. Losses overnight in Malaysian palm oil and European rapeseed futures also tempered the upside in canola.

The Canadian dollar’s climb back above parity against the US dollar was also viewed as an undermining price influence on canola.

With the US financial markets closed for the second day in a row due to Hurricane Sandy, trade in agricultural commodities was seen as choppy. Much of the volume in canola consisted of spreading.

As of 10:51 CDT, about 4,929 canola contracts had traded. Of those contracts, spreading accounted for 3,916 of the trades.

Milling wheat, durum and barley contracts were unchanged and untraded.

Prices in Canadian dollars per metric ton at 10:51 CDT: