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CBOT rice mostly lower amid profit taking

CHICAGO: Rough rice futures at the Chicago Board of Trade ended mostly weaker following light activity on Friday, pressed by profit taking after gains earlier this week, traders said.

CBOT rice settled 1 cent per hundredweight (cwt) higher to 14 lower, with March contracts down 1 at $5.52-1/2.

March rice ended at a three-week high of $5.53-1/2 on Thursday, and the market was thus poised for a corrective pullback Friday, traders said.

"The market today took a breather," said Jack Scoville, a trader with Price Futures Group in Chicago. "It was a consolidation day. You had a little profit taking."

Scoville said the rice pit witnessed commercial buying much of the week, after futures prices moved below U.S. cash levels.

"The market has been supported all week by the fact that futures got below cash, and that led to good commercial buying all week long," Scoville said. "But it didn't seem like it was there today."

Wednesday brings the U.S. Department of Agriculture's next monthly supply and demand reports. Scoville expected the reports to show a reduction in world rice production estimates.

The USDA's weekly export sales report Friday listed net U.S. rice sales for the week ended Dec. 30 at 60,200 tonnes, 44 percent below the previous week and 34 percent under the four-week average.

Rice futures volume in Friday's pit session was estimated by the CBOT at 250 contracts.-Reuters