ICE Canola Lifted By US Soyoil Gains

Canola trade was active with intermonth spreading augmenting the volume. The outright activity was felt to be a bit better today than earlier in the week, said traders.

The total canola volume was estimated at 14,546 contracts, down from Tuesday’s 18,495 contracts, including an estimated 9,448 contracts involved in the spread trade.

Canola was higher in the overnight market, prompted by the gains in CBOT soy complex futures. The market extended its gains as the North American trading session got underway and the CBOT soy complex opened with greater gains than expected, traders said. Canola ended with modest advances.

Canola drew much of its support from the solid gains in CBOT soyoil and the sharp rise in crude oil prices. Friendly technical signals gave support as the Jan contract challenged resistance at C$415/metric ton. Profitable crush margins were also supportive as was the slow pace to farmer selling.

Capping the gains was a choppy tone in CBOT soybean futures, the ample canola supply in western Canada, the lack of fresh strong non routine export demand
and the firm Canadian dollar, traders said.

Exporters were pricing routine sales to Mexico and Asia today while crushers were steady buyers. Commodity fund buying was noted in both the Jan and Mar contracts.
The selling was mainly commercial.
While farmer selling was light, cash dealers did note that there was some pricing of delivery contracts by farmers as the market
hit their target prices.

Western barley ended little changed in light trade. The lack of farmer selling was balanced off by fading end user demand as weather conditions in western Canada moderate, reducing need for livestock rations, brokers said.

The total barley volume was estimated at 20 contracts, up from no volume of Tuesday.

Prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton: