VEGOILS-Palm oil ends lower on stuttering February demand
(Update throughout, adds trader quote)
* Malaysia Feb 1-10 palm exports fall 4 pct m/m -SGS
* Malaysia's Jan palm stocks down 12.2 pct m/m to 1.77 mln T
-MPOB
* Palm oil may drop to 2,284 ringgit -technicals
By Anuradha Raghu
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Malaysian palm oil futures
ended lower on Tuesday, giving up gains in the earlier session
as traders fretted about poor appetite for the tropical oil,
although tighter stocks in the world's No.2 grower curbed
losses.
Despite the weak ringgit, which has made palm oil cheaper
for overseas buyers, shipments were sluggish, particularly to
top edible oil consumers India and China, cargo surveyor data
showed.
Intertek Testing Services reported that Malaysian palm
exports fell 16 percent between Feb. 1-10 from the same period
in January. Another surveyor Societe Generale de Surveillance
showed shipments dropped to 307,122 tonnes.
"Exports for the first 10 days of February is not good,"
said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Kuala
Lumpur "Even with the weak ringgit, you've still got poor
demand. So the market is going for a further correction."
The benchmark April contract had dropped 0.7
percent to 2,300 ringgit($643) per tonne by Tuesday's close,
near the lower end of the day's trading range of 2,344-2,294
ringgit.
Total traded volume stood at 52,742 lots of 25 tonnes, above
the usual 35,000 lots.
Official data from industry regulator the MPOB, released
after the midday break, showed Malaysian inventories at their
lowest in six months after flooding in Borneo helped to reduce
overall output to their weakest since February 2011.
While the level of stocks was largely in line with market
estimates, the drop in output was steeper, with January palm
crude oil production at only 1.16 million tonnes versus a
Reuters poll of 1.19 million tonnes.
The Malaysian ringgit fell as much as 0.6 percent
against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday to trade at 3.5830, on
growing pessimism amid worries about a possible downgrade in the
country's sovereign ratings.
Technicals showed that palm oil may drop to 2,284 ringgit,
as its correction triggered by a resistance at 2,355 ringgit
seems to be incomplete, according to Reuters market analyst Wang
Tao.
In other markets, Brent crude fell below $58 a barrel on
Tuesday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that
oil prices may decline as stocks continue to increase this year.
In other competing vegetable oil markets, the U.S. soyoil
contract for March fell 0.8 percent in late Asian trade.
The most active May soybean oil contract on the Dalian
Commodity Exchange rose 0.2 percent.
Palm, soy and crude oil prices at 1028 GMT
Contract Month Last Change Low High Volume
MY PALM OIL FEB5 2305 +11.00 2300 2305 15
MY PALM OIL MAR5 2297 -18.00 2297 2340 526
MY PALM OIL APR5 2300 -17.00 2294 2344 27329
CHINA PALM OLEIN MAY5 4940 +36.00 4886 4942 273506
CHINA SOYOIL MAY5 5516 +10.00 5470 5528 232768
CBOT SOY OIL MAR5 31.76 -5.00 31.74 32.20 7587
INDIA PALM OIL FEB5 454.00 -5.00 452.50 458.80 662
INDIA SOYOIL FEB5 611.80 -9.15 611.00 620.20 12035
NYMEX CRUDE MAR5 52.12 -0.74 51.90 52.65 36200
Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne
CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound
Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne
India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg
Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel
($1 = 3.5780 Malaysian ringgit)
($1 = 6.2416 Chinese yuan)
($1 = 62.11 Indian rupee)
(Editing by Tom Hogue, editing by Louise Heavens)