Soyabean futures at the Chicago Board of Trade dived early Thursday on a technical setback from a month-long climb that drove prices to near six-month highs this week, traders said. March soyabeans fell 6-3/4 cents per bushel to $6.12 by 10:45 am CST (1645 GMT). May was 7 lower at $6.20-1/4, while the deferreds were 5-1/2 to 8-1/2 cents weaker. Selling was scattered among commodity funds. Cargill Investor Services, FC Stone, Goldenberg Hehmeyer, Man Financial and R.J. O'Brien each bought about 100 May contracts early.
The market was long overdue for a technical correction, traders said. The nine-day relative strength index for May soyabeans closed at 82 on Wednesday, above the 70 benchmark viewed as a technically overbought market.
Heightened volatility led the CBOT to raise its margin requirements for the second time in about a week - increasing them for soyabeans, soyameal and soyaoil futures beginning with the Sunday night session.
Commodity funds have been aggressive buyers of CBOT commodities over the past week amid inflationary fears and speculative interest in hard assets.
The catalyst for the rally was a smaller Brazilian bean crop due to hot, dry weather. It's been dry in Southern Brazil for about a month, causing analysts to trim their crop estimates to the 56 million to 60 million tonne range. That compares with USDA's estimate of 63 million.
Memphis-based analytical firm Informa Economics on Thursday pegged the Brazilian crop at 56.3 million tonnes.
But forecasts called for rains to move in to portions of South America's dry soya growing region by next week. That should pressure CBOT prices, traders said.
There were also heavy deliveries of 489 contracts against March soyabeans.
Soyameal futures were lower, pressured by technical selling and weakness in US cash markets. March was down $1.90 per ton at $184.30, with the deferreds $2.30 to $2.90 lower.
Weekly export data for soyameal was disappointing. USDA said on Thursday that last week's US soyameal export sales totalled 37,500 tonnes (old- and new-crop combined). That was below estimates for 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes.
There were 14 deliveries on the March soyameal contract.
The soyaoil market was also lower on a technical setback. March was 0.25 cent weaker at 22.75 cents per lb, with the back months 0.17 to 0.30 cent lower.
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