"CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) soyoil came down yesterday by about 90 points, and there were some traders who were trying to break the previous low," said a trader with a foreign commodities brokerage in Malaysia. At the close, the benchmark February contract on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange slid 2.3 percent to 2,238 ringgit ($730) per tonne, slightly off a low at 2,229 ringgit, a level unseen since November 12.
Total traded volumes stood at 35,105 lots of 25 tonnes each, higher than the usual 25,000 lots. Traders are looking out for Malaysia's new crude palm oil export tax that will be formalised in a gazette on December 17 under a new tax structure that aims to claw back market share from top producer Indonesia. Palm oil imports by India, the world's top vegetable oil buyer, are likely to have fallen in November from October levels, which were the highest in at least three years, as demand shrank with the start of cold weather that solidifies the oil, a Reuters survey showed.
In other vegetable oil markets, US soyaoil for January delivery fell 0.4 percent in late Asian trade, after falling by almost 2 percent in the previous session. The most active May 2013 soybean oil contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange closed 1.8 percent lower.