ROUGH RICE: New All-Time Highs Set By Joe Poncer 02-01-08 1552ET
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--Chicago Board of Trade rice futures ended with strong gains in active trade Friday as fund buying and spillover gains from an overnight rally boosted prices, a commission house analyst said.
Spot-month March set another all-time high on monthly continuous open- auction charts for the second straight session at $15.26 per hundredweight and settled 35 cents higher at $15.17.
Technical buying boosted prices, with March gapping open higher on daily charts, encouraging buying interest, the analyst said.
Profit-taking late in the session pushed futures off their highs, a trader said.
In open-auction trading, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Rosenthal were buyers on the day, thought to be fund related. Rosenthal was also a seller. Commercial activity was largely absent, a trader said.
Volume was estimated at 1,500 contracts in open-auction trading and 2,741 contracts on Globex. This compares to 1,481 contracts in open-auction trading and 1,525 contracts in electronic trading activity Thursday.
In options trading, there was active buying of the May $17.60 calls, the highest rice option strike ever opened, a floor broker said.
In other rice news, Thailand's Jan. 1-Jan. 22 rice exports totaled 657,454 metric tons compared to 400,409 tons in the same period a year earlier, the Commerce Ministry's Department of Foreign Trade said Friday.
The Philippines bought 454,000 metric tons of rice from Vietnam and Thailand, the National Food Authority said Friday. The NFA bought 300,000 tons from Vietnam and 154,000 tons from Thailand for shipment between February and April.
Iran is likely to buy 200,000 metric tons of Thai rice before the end of March despite high prices, traders said Friday. Iran is expected to buy around 1 million tons of rice in 2008, mostly from Thailand.
