SINGAPORE: Chicago soybean futures gained more ground on Monday, rising almost 2% and climbing to a more than one-week high as lower U.S. planting and inventories raised concerns over supplies.
Corn firmed after dropping to a two-and-half-year low on larger U.S. acreage, while wheat slid almost 1%.
“In its latest Prospective Plantings report, the USDA estimates soybean plantings will drop significantly while corn acreage will rise this year,” ING said in a note.
Given the price action, it is likely that money managers further boost net long positions in soybeans and reduce net long corn positions, it added.
CBOT soybeans soar on USDA acreage
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) gained 1.8% at $13.67-3/4 a bushel, as of 0229 GMT, after hitting its highest since June 22 at $13.69 a bushel.
Corn rose 0.4% to $4.96-1/4 a bushel, after sliding to its weakest since January 2021 at $4.89 a bushel earlier on Monday while wheat lost 0.9% to $6.45 a bushel.
Soybean prices rallied more than 6% on Friday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said U.S. farmers planted 83.5 million acres of the oilseed, down 4 million acres from the government’s March forecast and below the lowest in a range of analyst estimates.
The reduced U.S. acreage is likely to result in smaller new-crop supplies, potentially impacting shipments to China, the world’s biggest buyer in the last quarter of the year, typically the peak marketing season for the United States.
China’s most-active soybean contract rose 3%, while soymeal climbed 6%.
The USDA reported U.S. soybean stockpiles as of June 1 at 796 million bushels, down 18% from a year ago and below most market estimates.
For corn, the agency’s plantings estimate of 94.1 million acres was up more than 2 million acres from its March forecast and topped the range of analysts’ pre-report estimates.
The big corn acreage number overshadowed smaller-than-expected stocks figures. The USDA reported June 1 corn stockpiles at 4.106 billion bushels, below most trade estimates, while June 1 wheat stocks fell to 580 million bushels, the lowest for this time of year since 2008.
In news, Russia said on Friday it saw no reason to extend the Black Sea grain deal beyond July 17 because the West had acted in such an “outrageous” way over the agreement, but assured poor countries that Russian grain exports would continue.
The European Commission on Thursday sharply cut its monthly forecast for this year’s cereals harvests in the bloc with usable production of common wheat now seen 2.6 million tons lower than last month at 128.9 million metric tons.
Large speculators switched to a net long position in CBOT corn futures in the week to June 27, regulatory data released on Friday showed.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s weekly commitments of traders report also showed that non-commercial traders, a category that includes hedge funds, trimmed their net short position in CBOT wheat and raised their net long position in soybeans.
Comments
Comments are closed.