SINGAPORE: Chicago soybean futures rose on Friday, recouping the previous session's losses, as hopes grew for a trade deal between Washington and Beijing that could revive flows of US soybeans to top importer China.
Corn and wheat were also firm as traders also saw scope for US cereal exports to China as part of any trade agreement.
Price movements in grains remained modest though as traders sought firmer indications of progress in this week's high-level negotiations between U.S and Chinese officials in Washington, while also awaiting a backlog of data caused by a partial US government shutdown to be cleared.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping soon to try to seal a comprehensive trade deal while China's trade delegation said the latest round of talks with the United States made "important progress", China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
"These negotiations are being conducted at senior political levels, not by trade bureaucrats. We expect that political leadership to galvanise the negotiating process," said Tobin Gorey, director of agricultural strategy, Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Soybeans are the most valuable US agricultural export to China and stalled shipments in the past six months during the countries' tariff battle have swollen US stockpiles.
Large Chinese purchases of US corn and wheat are also seen as possible in a trade settlement and Dan Cekander, president of DC Analysis, said a deal scenario that handed all of China's 7.2 million tonne corn import quota for 2019 to US supplies could reshape the market.
"You would take (US) stocks below the key level of 10 percent (of demand) and that's how you go to $5 corn," he told Agritel's Paris Grain Day conference.
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board Of Trade was up 1.0 percent at $$9.24 a bushel by 1243 GMT.
CBOT wheat added 0.4 percent to $5.18-3/4 a bushel while corn gained 0.5 percent to $3.78-1/2 a bushel.
Traders were still assessing South American soybean and corn harvest prospects.
Corn was pressured in part by the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange raising its estimate of Argentina's corn crop to 45 million tonnes from 43 million tonnes previously, citing better-than-expected yields.
In exports, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported export sales of US corn in the week to Dec. 20 at 1.75 million tonnes, above trade expectations, but traders were waiting for the rest of a month-long backlog in data to be cleared.
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