KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures bounced back from their lowest since mid-December on Friday as traders closed short positions ahead of the long weekend, but were down for the third week in a row on weakness in demand for the edible oil.

By Friday’s close the benchmark April contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange edged up 0.56 per cent to 2,146 ringgit ($591) per tonne, after hitting 2,106 ringgit during early trade, the benchmark’s lowest since Dec 17.

Total traded volume stood at 61,785 lots of 25 tonnes, well above the average 35,000 lots.

“It’s up purely on short-covering for the long holiday,” said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Kuala Lumpur.

“If you are short in the market, if you’ve got a good profit, definitely you are going to buy back. You are not going to wait for next week until Wednesday,” the trader added.

Exports of palm oil from Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the edible oil, were up 2.6pc in 2014 to 21.76 million tonnes, an industry body said on Friday.

Published in Dawn January 31st, 2015

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