ICE Canada Review: Canola Turns Narrowly Mixed At Close

Commercial and speculative buying were both supportive for the canola market for most of the day on Thursday, with the advances in the CBOT soyoil futures accounting for some of the spillover demand in canola.

The ongoing production uncertainty across western Canada also provided some underlying support to the market, as did the drought issues for the European rapeseed crop, according to a broker.

However, the broker noted that all of the unseeded acres in western Canada have been priced into the market, and the remaining canola fields are starting to show some improvement, despite persistent problems in some areas.

While farmers are still showing some uncertainty when it comes to pricing new crop supplies, the recent strength in the futures has brought some more hedges to the market, which put some pressure on values, according to traders.

There were also ideas that canola futures were looking overbought from a technical standpoint, and some profit-taking was evident on Thursday, according to market participants.

A sharply stronger tone in the Canadian dollar, which was up by roughly a cent relative to its US counterpart, also put some downward pressure on canola values, according to a broker.

About 7,644 contracts traded on Thursday, which compares with Wednesday when an estimated 9,957 contracts traded. Spreading accounted for about 2,268 of the contracts traded.

Western barley futures were untraded and unchanged on Thursday.

Settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.