Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures ended mixed on Monday after late speculative selling followed commercial buying below the $9.60 level in bellwether May, traders said.
"There was selling that appeared to be a continuation of Friday's weak trade," one broker said. "Man Financial bought May below $9.60, and we had light local and speculative buying, or short-covering.
But we didn't find any momentum to the upside and drifted lower." CBOT rough rice settled down 7 cents per cwt to up 3 cents, with May down 7 cents at $9.55-1/2 and July down 7 cents at $9.73 per cwt.
CBOT may rice again settled well below its 10- and 20-day moving averages of $10.08 and $10.00 per cwt, respectively.
"The talk has become more bearish than bullish, with the realisation that we need strong exports to remain bullish," the CBOT rice trader said.
There was still no word about the results of an Iraqi tender for 165,000 tonnes of rice, despite reports that Iraqi grain buyers were in Thailand a key global rice exporter.
Still, some brokers noted speculation that Iraq's rice tender might be increased to 232,000 tonnes. Moreover, there was also talk that Iraq might want to tender for another 240,000 tonnes within the next couple of months.
US rice industry officials had hoped to reenter the Iraqi market, but US rice prices are much higher than Asian 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.
CBOT traders also noted positioning before this week's key plantings intentions and quarterly stocks reports, due to be released at 7:30 am CST (1330 GMT) on Wednesday.
US rice acreage is expected to rise this spring, following high US prices and lasts year's record yields. Some university rice extension analysts have predicted that US rice plantings could top last year's acreage by as much as 6 percent to 9 percent.
Quarterly rice stocks were expected to drop from last year's 4.95 million tonnes to about 4.15 million tonnes, according to Bill Nelson, AG Edwards & Sons analyst.
CBOT rough rice estimated volume on Monday was 349 contracts, compared with Friday's volume of 794 lots. Options trade totalled 254 lots.