By Lewa Pardomuan
SINGAPORE, April 1 (Reuters) – Rising rubber inventory will curb trading activity in Tokyo futures this week and keep prices in a tight range, while weakness in London is pushing up premiums for robusta in Southeast Asia, dealers said on Monday.
Tokyo rubber futures fell their to lowest since December at 266.1 yen a kg on concerns about ripples from the debt crisis in Cyprus and lower-than-expected Chinese PMI data. The most active contract, September, ended the quarter down more than 8 percent.
“Prices are on the weak side because China and Japan still have plenty of rubber in their warehouses,” said Gu Jiong, an analyst at Yutaka Shoji Co in Tokyo, who pegged resistance at 277 yen.
Rubber inventories in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose 1.5 percent to 117,696 tonnes last week (SNR-TOTAL-DW), their highest in three years as China cuts import taxes.
In Japan, crude rubber inventories at local ports climbed by 1,250 tonnes in the 10 days to March 10 to a nine-month high of 12,553 tonnes — one of several bearish factors that knocked the price off a 10-month high in February.
(Editing by Joseph Radford)
Source: Reuters
