Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures closed steady on Tuesday after a lightly traded session, floor traders said. "It was a slow day. There wasn't much to get the market moving one way or the other," said one rice broker. November rice closed unchanged at $9.89 per hundredweight.
January was steady at $10.05. Volume was light estimated at 371 futures and 70 options, compared to 501 lots that traded on Monday. Traders were waiting for the US Agriculture Department to release its latest US rice ending stocks estimate in its November crop report on Thursday.
There's a general feeling that the government could leave its 2006/07 US end stocks estimate for rice unchanged at 33.4 million cwt, after raising it last month by 1.5 million cwt.
"I would expect production to be a little lower but usage has been anaemic. I would not be surprised to see them lower domestic slightly and maybe trim a little off exports pretty much a wash with the stocks," said Ed Taylor, an analyst with Firstgrain.com, a market advisory service. There were no November deliveries on Tuesday morning.
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