Vegetable Oil Prices Bounce

Vegetable oil markets bounced on Wednesday as selling pressure waned, and both markets consolidated the remaining gains from the recent rally. Overnight strength in crude oil prices, which carried into the U.S. session, also contributed to the bullish tone in both markets. Both markets rallied on below-average volume, which may indicate that the move higher was a pause in a downtrend and not the establishment of the lower end of a new trading range. With cash prices generally moving lower during the week, a pause is a plausible scenario. Still, the demand for imports from Chinese buyers could reverse the cash markets and potentially the futures markets at almost any time.

Soybean oil futures rose about 1/2 percent (September contract +19 basis points per pound). However, selling at the five-day exponential and 10-day moving averages limited…