The Edge Markets (18/04/2018) - KUALA LUMPUR (April 18): Malaysian palm oil futures closed flat on Wednesday as short covering in the second half of trade, helped the market recover from losses earlier in the day.  

The benchmark palm oil contract for July delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange closed at 2,408 ringgit (US$619.34) a tonne on Wednesday evening. It earlier fell as much as 1.2% to an intraday low of 2,380 ringgit.

Palm had jumped 1.6% in its previous trading session, after seeing six straight days of declines.

Trading volumes on Wednesday stood at 52,515 lots of 25 tonnes each at the close of trade.

"The market saw some short covering after today's lows," said a Kuala Lumpur-based futures trader, who also said market sentiment was not strong on the lack of bullish news, referring to expectations of rising production and slow demand.

Malaysia's palm oil production for April is expected to rise in line with seasonal trend. It last rose 17.2% on-month to 1.57 million tonnes in March, its highest March production since 2000.

Demand for the tropical oil in April, however, is expected to be weak. Shipments from Malaysia during the first half of the month rose between 5% and 6% from the corresponding period in March, compared with a rise of 25% to 32% from April 1-10, data from inspection company AmSpec Agri Malaysia and cargo surveyor Societe Generale de Surveillance showed.

In other related oils, the Chicago Board of Trade's May soybean oil contract edged up as much as 0.4%, while the May soybean oil on China's Dalian Commodity Exchange climbed up to 0.4%. 

Meanwhile, the Dalian May palm oil contract gained 0.8%. 

Palm oil prices are affected by movements in rival edible oils, as they compete for a share in the global vegetable oils market.
    
 Palm, soy and crude oil prices as of 1102 GMT

 Contract                    Month    Last  Change  Low    High  Volume
 MY PALM OIL             MAY8     2393   +1.00    2375    2396     462
 MY PALM OIL             JUN8     2409   +0.00    2381    2409    6450
 MY PALM OIL             JUL8     2409   +0.00    2380    2410   21254
 CHINA PALM OLEIN  SEP8     4998  +16.00   4984    5012  304048
 CHINA SOYOIL          SEP8     5802  +20.00   5778    5830  327766
 CBOT SOY OIL          MAY8    31.32   +0.13   31.16   31.33    3702
 INDIA PALM OIL        APR8   639.70   +0.60  637.40   640.9     283
 INDIA SOYOIL           APR8    765.9   -2.05     764      767.9    2420
 NYMEX CRUDE         MAY8    67.50   +0.98   66.56   67.55   38726

 Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne
 CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound
 Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne
 India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg
 Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel
 
(US$1 = 3.8880 ringgit)
(US$1 = 65.6150 Indian rupees)
(US$1 = 6.2829 Chinese yuan)

Read more at http://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/palm-closes-flat-after-recouping-early-losses