Rough rice futures at the Chicago Board of Trade rallied to six-week highs on Thursday on a late technical rally, traders said. September rice ended up 19 cents, or 2.8 percent, at $6.88 per hundredweight. November was up 17 cents at $7.07. Volume was estimated at 643 futures, up from 535 on Wednesday, and 56 options.
Trade was thin and values were grinding lower until the last hour of the session, when locals and commercials pushed September into buy-stops up around $6.70.
From there, fund buying from O'Connor and Co and Man Financial, among others, lifted September and November to their highs, with September reaching $6.90.
Commercials sold the market at the highs, traders said. The market shrugged off bearish weekly export sales data. The US Department of Agriculture reported a net sales reduction of 4,800 tonnes of US rice for the week, a marketing year low.
Increased sales to Honduras, Haiti, Italy and the Netherlands were more than offset by decreases for Iraq, with 30,400 tonnes switched to marketing year 2005/06, USDA said.