Rubber futures and physical rubber markets in Asia fluctuated in a narrow range mainly caused by reports on weak U.S. and Chinese economic data in the previous month, concerns about a decision of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rates on Wednesday, and weak market sentiment even though Japanese yen continued weakening against the U.S. dollar and market fundamentals remained intact.
Furthermore, market players overlooked a continued fall of rubber stocks in Qingdao’s bonded warehouses from a high of 361,000 million tons at the end of April 2014 to 192,300 million tons on 15 September 2014. It could be interpreted that demand for rubber in China remains steady, but Chinese rubber manufacturers could not get financial credits to purchase rubber from overseas. In addition to that, the current month contract on Tokyo rubber futures stayed below Thai RSS3 spot price on Thursday and Friday.
– IRCo
