By Phil Franz-Warkentin, Commodity News Service Canada
WINNIPEG, Dec. 11 – ICE Canada canola contracts were bouncing around both sides of unchanged Friday morning, although the bias was higher in the most active months.
Continued weakness in the Canadian dollar provided some underlying support for canola to start the day. The currency was trading just above 73 US cents in early activity, hitting fresh 11-year lows in the process.
The softer Canadian dollar makes exports more attractive and also helps boost domestic crush margins.
On the other side, large Canadian supplies, losses in CBOT soyoil, improving South American crop conditions, and technical chart resistance to the upside all put some pressure on values. The most active March contract briefly traded above the C$485 per tonne mark, but ran into some selling pressure at that level.
About 4,300 canola contracts had traded as of 8:52 CST, with the January/March spread a feature as participants roll out of the front month.
Milling wheat, durum, and barley futures were all untraded.