Rough rice futures at the Chicago Board of Traded ended weaker on Thursday as the market drifted lower amid thin volume, traders said. "When we failed to climb more than 2 cents on the open, we couldn't attract major trading on either side of the market," one rice broker said. "Everyone is just waiting for tomorrow's (USDA) report," he added.
Thinly traded March rice, now in delivery, ended 3 cents per hundredweight lower at $10.37 and new-crop November closed 6 cents lower at $11.39. An estimated 355 futures and 49 options traded, down from the 698 futures and 575 options that traded on Wednesday.
Only minor changes were expected by USDA in its March supply-and-demand report to be issued on Friday morning. The general consensus among traders is that if the government makes any changes to its 2006/07 US rice ending stocks estimate, it would be an upward adjustment to reflect the weak export demand for milled rice. USDA is currently estimating 2006/07 US rice ending stocks at 30.4 million cwt.
Weekly export sales were described as decent by floor traders. But year-to-date exports lag a year ago by 21 percent. USDA reported that 50,600 tonnes of US rice were sold for export last week, or 24 percent below the previous week. There were 106 March deliveries overnight but they were met by strong stopping with the ADM house account taking 96.
In world news, the Philippines bought 580,000 tones of rice for March-to-June delivery, with 415,000 tonnes sourced from Vietnam. Another 155,000 tonnes was sourced from Thailand and 10,000 tonnes from Pakistan. This would bring the Philippines total rice imports to roughly 1.2 million tonnes since the start of the year.
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