World Vegetable Oil Prices Resume Slide

With the short-term technical pressure to rebound gone, world vegetable oil prices fell sharply on the last trading day of the week. Futures fell despite continued stabilization of crude oil prices, which indicates that traders remain concerned about the fundamentals of the vegetable oil markets. If crude oil prices remain stable or continue to move higher, traders may start to price in an improvement in vegetable oil fundamentals. However, concerns the recent rally in crude oil is just a technical bounce, and when the June contract expires in May, prices could fall even further below zero than they did this week, may prevent a sustained rally in vegetable oil prices.

Soybean oil futures declined by about two percent (July contract -54 basis points per pound) but settled well above the lows of the day as buying below the lower…