KUALA LUMPUR — The Malaysian rubber market is expected to trade cautiously next week with traders on the lookout for new signals. A dealer said commodity price movements, specifically of crude oil, would continue to be the centre of attention among the traders. “Not only that, the market is closely monitoring the ringgit as rubber prices will be propped up by the weaker ringgit,” the dealer said.
For the week just ended, the local market was traded mixed on the first three days, and for the other two days it soared to near a level last seen in July last year, when the local SMR 20 was traded near the 552 sen a kg level. On a weekly basis, the Malaysian Rubber Board’s official physical price for tyre-grade SMR 20 jumped 28.5 sen to 541 sen a kg, while latex-in-bulk soared 43 sen to 431.5 sen a kg. The 5 pm unofficial closing price for SMR 20 rose 32.5 sen to 532.50 sen a kg, while latex-in-bulk gained 33 sen to 433 sen a kg.
