By Dwayne Klassen, Commodity News Service Canada

Winnipeg – September 13/12 – CNS – Canola contracts on the ICE Futures Canada platform were trading in a mixed range at 10:40 CDT Thursday morning with the nearby months up and the deferred values down. Light commercial demand along with yield concerns helped to generate some of the support seen in the front months, market watchers said.

Much of the commercial interest was said to be pricing old export business to Japan as well as covering domestic processor needs.

The yield concerns were associated with continued below average results from the advancing harvest operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, traders said. Extremely high winds right across the Canadian prairies over the past week have also resulted in further yield loss, with the winds blowing swaths around and in the process causing pods to shatter and be lost.

Farmer selling of harvested canola into the cash pipeline also remained on the slow side, helping to generate some underlying support.

Strength in CBOT soyoil futures were also spilling over to provide some support for canola.

The upside in the nearby November contract was being limited by technical resistance at the C$645 per ton level. However, traders were anticipating that level to be tested continuously during the session.

The general firmness of the Canadian dollar and the losses in CBOT soybean futures tempered the upside in canola and put some deferred contracts on the defensive, brokers said.

Sentiment that the gains seen on Wednesday were overdone also initiated some light selling interest.

As of 10:40 CDT, about 4,705 canola contracts had traded.

There were 2 milling wheat contracts traded. Durum and barley were unchanged and untraded.

Prices in Canadian dollars per metric ton at 10:40 CDT: