Trader's Comment: Palm oil futures rallied strongly on late covering.

Palm oil futures rallied strongly on late covering. Benchmark Apr09 initially opened RM40 higher at 1920, tracking the eCBOT soy oil edging higher in the early trade, extending its overnight strong gains on worries of the drought condition in Argentina. It fell to intra day low of 1907 after fully covered yesterday’s left over gap, but later bounced back again when strong buying support activities emerged and sent CPO prices to close at 1945 before lunch. Benchmark Apr09 then hovered between 1950-1930 level through out afternoon session before some aggressive buyers appeared in late trading and pushed CPO prices to settled RM89 higher at the intra day high of 1969. Market sentiment was bullish as traders were expecting some good numbers from MPOB’s supply & demand data which is scheduled to release tomorrow, even though both private cargo surveyors reported a slightly decline of export data for the period of 1-10 Jan.