Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures ended mixed on Tuesday with light speculative buying supporting the nearby contracts after profit-taking, brokers said.
Chicago Board of Trade rough rice settled up 14 cents per cwt to down 3 cents, with May up 11-1/2 cents at $10.13 and July up 14 cents at $10.29 per cwt.
"Trade was agonisingly slow," one Chicago Board of Trade rice broker said. "It seems the ongoing rally in the other grains has captured the funds' full attention."
Uncertainty over results of a recent Iraqi tender for 165,000 tonnes of rice also continued to limit buying interest in Chicago Board of Traderice futures, brokers said.
US rice industry officials are hoping to re-enter the Iraqi market, however US rice prices are more expensive than Asian rice prices.
Before 1990, Iraq was one of the largest markets for US long grain rice, averaging 370,000 tonnes per year during the 1980s, and peaking at 513,000 tonnes in 1987.
Any new sales to Iraq would come at a time when US rice prices are already at 5-1/2-year highs following rallying Asian prices and on a drawdown in US rice supplies to a five-year low.
Comments
Comments are closed.