Malaysian palm oil futures fell on Friday evening in line with competing vegetable oils, marking a fourth consecutive session of losses this week. Futures were range-bound earlier in the day pending official government data from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), which is scheduled to release March data on Monday.
Palm oil end-stocks in March are seen dipping below the 2-million-tonne mark for the first time in a year, a Reuters survey showed, declining 10.3 percent from a month earlier to 1.95 million tonnes. Output, however, is forecast to come in at the weakest for the month since 2007. The palm oil contract for June delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange dropped 1.1 percent to reach 2,680 ringgit ($687) per tonne at the close of trade, an intraday and two-week low. Traded volumes were 31,037 lots of 25 tonnes each, lower than the 2015 daily average of 44,600 lots.
"There's no excitement over external markets as the Dalian is in down trading range," said a trader at a brokerage firm in Kuala Lumpur. "The market is waiting for new leads pending the MPOB report. That's why volume is light today." The trader later said the market saw some technical selling after breaking immediate support at 2,700 ringgit.
Palm oil may fall to 2,629 ringgit per tonne as it has got out of a neutral range of 2,716-2,776 ringgit, according to Wang Tao, a Reuters market analyst for commodities and energy technicals. In competing vegetable oil markets, the May Chicago Board of Trade soyoil contract fell 0.7 percent, while the September soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange lost 0.6 percent. The offer price for crude palm kernel oil fell for a fourth straight day to 4960.38 ringgit per tonne on Friday evening, according to price assessments by Thomson Reuters, its lowest in nearly three weeks.