ICE Canola Contracts Ease On Firm Cdn Dlr

Activity in canola was extremely thin with most market players choosing to sit on the sidelines given the closure of the Chicago Board of Trade for the US Memorial Day holiday.

Canola futures on the ICE Canada Exchange did not register a trade until around 09:10 CDT Monday morning, despite being open all night.

Commercials were seen unloading positions given the continued uptrend in the value of the Canadian dollar, brokers said. Traders noted that it did not take much in the way of sell-orders to push prices down in the thin volumes.

Some minor selling was also associated with the declines seen in Malaysian palm oil futures overnight, brokers said.

Sentiment that CBOT soybean futures could start on the defensive Tuesday morning, when activity in the US resumes, also prompted some of the bearish price sentiment, brokers said.

Some underlying support in canola came from the pricing of old export business by the Japanese and by some minor domestic crusher demand, traders said.

Some underlying support in canola was also coming from weather worries, especially where extreme precipitation amounts flooded canola fields in western Canada, traders said.

There were worries that some canola fields will not be seeded for quite some time while other concerns centered around flooded out fields, traders said.

There were an estimated 244 canola contracts traded at 10:41 CDT.

There were no western barley futures traded as of 10:41 CDT.