Malaysian palm oil futures closed lower on Friday, as traders took profits from a 13-month high hit earlier in the week, while market players are also keeping a close watch on Malaysian palm exports data due on Monday. Palm oil futures went as high as 3,628 ringgit on Tuesday, a level not seen since March 8 last year, as industry regulator Malaysian Palm Oil Board data pointed to lower-than-expected stocks and improving exports, painting a bullish picture for the edible oil.
But palm oil recorded its first weekly loss at 2.6 percent after five straight weeks of gains, as some traders feared the market had been overbought. "All this bullish news is not something that people just realised recently, it has been known for a while. Some of it has already been priced in," said Ivy Ng, an analyst with Malaysia's CIMB Investment Bank.
Benchmark June palm oil futures on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange traded 1.4 percent lower to close at 3,510 ringgit ($1,150) per tonne. Traded volumes stood at 35,013 lots of 25 tonnes each, much higher than the usual 25,000 lots. On the technicals front, Reuters market analyst Wang Tao posted a bearish view, saying palm oil would drop to 3,481 ringgit per tonne, based on a wave cycle analysis.
Malaysia's palm oil stocks for March fell to a seven-month low at 1.96 million tonnes, exceeding estimates in a Reuters poll that called for a 3.5 percent drop in palm stocks to 1.99 million tonnes, prompting some traders who worried about the shortfall to buy more crude palm oil.
Export demand, meanwhile, recorded a monthly gain of close to 9 percent for the first 10 days of April. Cargo surveyors Intertek Testing Services and Societe Generale de Surveillance will release exports for the first 15 days of April on Monday. In other vegetable oil markets, the most active US soyoil contract for May lost 0.7 percent while the most active Dalian soyoil September contract inched up 0.7 percent.