KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures fell for a second consecutive session on Thursday, hit by weaker US soyoil and a failure to break the previous session’s intraday high, dealers said, forecasting further range-bound trading, pending new leads.

Benchmark palm oil futures for April delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange were down 0.6 per cent at 3,131 ringgit ($704) a tonne at the end of the trading day. Traded volumes stood at 41,828 lots of 25 tonnes each on Thursday evening.

“The market’s technicals are not good, it couldn’t break yesterday’s high of 3,175 ringgit,” said a trader from Kuala Lumpur.

“People could also be wanting to liquidate their position because of Trump,” he said, referring to the US President-elect’s inauguration on Friday and concerns about his policies.

Palm was down earlier in the day on the back of weaker US soy.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017