North American grain/oilseed review: Canola posts small gains after choppy day

By Phil Franz-Warkentin

Glacier FarmMedia MarketsFarm — The ICE Futures canola market settled with small gains in the most active contracts on Monday, recovering from earlier losses after finding chart support.

The January contract dipped below its 20-day moving average in early activity but settled just above that technical point. Chicago soyoil was also weaker for most of the day, before being pulled higher with crude oil by the close.

Scale-down end user demand provided support, with ideas that Canadian canola supplies are tighter than the official estimates also underpinning values.

The Canadian dollar was stronger on Monday, putting some pressure on values.

There were an estimated 43,723 contracts traded on Monday, which compares with Friday when 77,935 contracts traded. Spreading accounted for 27,692 of the contracts traded.

SOYBEAN futures at the Chicago Board of Trade moved higher on Monday, recovering from early losses as a rally in crude oil and solid export demand provided support.

Weekly United States soybean export inspections of about 2.2 million tonnes were down eight per cent on the week, but year-to-date movement through 11 weeks of the marketing year at 17.5 million tonnes were the second largest of the past 11 years.

Additional private sales of 261,000 tonnes to Mexico were also reported.

Scattered showers are forecast across most Brazilian soybean growing regions over the next week, which should help with germination and development of the recently seeded crops.

CORN was underpinned by a rally in wheat.

Weekly export inspections showed 820,600 tonnes of U.S. corn was shipped during the past week, up by three per cent from the previous week. Year-to-date shipments of just over nine million tonnes were the highest for this time of year in six years.

Speculators were busy covering short positions in the corn market, although the good Brazilian weather tempered the upside.

WHEAT posted double digit gains, with escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine behind some of the buying interest. The U.S. gave Ukraine the go-ahead over the weekend to use its long-range missiles against Russia.

Weekly US wheat export sales were down on the week, at just under 200,000 tonnes.