Chicago | Reuters — Chicago Board of Trade wheat and soybean futures all turned higher on Tuesday as a stubbornly bearish market gained support from weather issues in Brazil and a flurry of short covering as funds shift out of their huge net short positions.
Corn futures opened higher, then turned lower by midday before ending unchanged. Hot, dry weather is pressuring Brazil’s moisture-loving Safrinah corn crop and boosting corn futures on questions of how that weather might impact yields, traders said.
Brazilian crop agency Conab on Tuesday slashed its estimate for the country’s total corn crop to 112,753 million metric tons, down 943 million metric tons from February’s forecast.
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As the harvest in southern Alberta presses on, a broker said that is one of the factors pulling feed prices lower in the region. Darcy Haley, vice-president of Ag Value Brokers in Lethbridge, added that lower cattle numbers in feedlots, plentiful amounts of grass for cattle to graze and a lacklustre export market also weighed on feed prices.
A lack of fresh demand news was expected to cap the day’s gains, traders said.
“There’s no new demand,” said Mark Schultz, chief market analyst at Northstar Commodity. “The trading is based on weather only.”
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Wv1 settled up 1/4-cent at 5.47-1/2 a bushel.
CBOT corn Cv1 ended unchanged at $4.41-3/4 per bushel, while soybeans Sv1 settled up 16-3/4 cents at $11.96 per bushel.
Ukraine’s diminished grain and oilseed harvest, as well as excessively rainy weather in France, may be playing a small role to boost wheat prices, analysts said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture rated the same percentage of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas wheat crop in good to excellent condition as last week.
Falling Russian wheat export prices and hefty global supplies continue to cast a bearish pall over wheat futures, and curb the competitiveness of U.S. wheat on the global market. Exporters cancelled sales of more than 504,000 metric tons of CBOT wheat destined for China within the past week.
“Wheat is the most bearish in terms of fundamentals, but it’s still trading better,” Schultz said.
–Additional reporting for Reuters by Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris.
