ICE Canola Contracts Up As Domestic Demand Returns

Buying interest from processors in western Canada was said to have picked up in comparison to Wednesday and was helping to provide a firm price floor for the commodity, brokers said.

Adding to the upward price action in canola was the pricing of old export business, traders said.

Some hedging by elevator companies was evident, but that level of activity was lighter than what it was on Wednesday, and helped to generate some support. A winter storm in Alberta was said to have caused very poor driving conditions, which kept producers from loading up trucks and driving them to the elevator system, brokers said.

Some light chart based buying was also evident, and helped to provide some minor support for canola.

The small advances seen in CBOT soyoil futures were also an underpinning price influence.

The weakness displayed by CBOT soybean values restricted the price advances in canola as did the lightening up of positions by speculative fund accounts ahead of year-end, traders said.

The rolling of positions out of the January future and into the March contract continued to be a feature of the activity in canola.

There were an estimated 9,372 canola contracts traded at 10:58 CST.

There were no western barley futures traded as of 10:58 CST.