The Malaysian rubber market ended mostly lower today, influenced by the poor performance of regional rubber futures markets and weaker crude oil prices as a recent surge in new Covid-19 cases in Beijing, China and the US continued to weigh on sentiment.
A dealer said Tokyo Commodity Exchange (Tocom) rubber futures fell for the second session today over the prolonged economic impact on Japan and across the world from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“A spike in new coronavirus cases in China and the US renewed fears that people would stay indoors, stalling recovery in fuel demand even as lockdowns ease,” she said.
Furthermore, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) had highlighted in a monthly report that the market would remain in surplus in the second half of 2020 even as demand improves as it now expects supply from outside of the group to be about 300,000 barrels per day, higher than earlier predicted.
At 12pm, the Malaysian Rubber Board’s (MRB) reference physical price for tyre-grade SMR 20 had increased five sen to 484.50 per kg, while latex-in-bulk trimmed five sen to 484 sen per kg.
At the close at 5pm, the MRB’s reference physical price for SMR 20 eased one sen to 483 per kg and latex-in-bulk decreased 1.5 sen to 483.5 sen per kg.
