SINGAPORE: Chicago soybean futures gained more ground on Tuesday, with the market climbing to its highest level in almost one week on the back of short-covering, although rising global supplies kept a lid on prices.
Wheat dropped to its weakest level in three months on pressure from abundant Black Sea supplies, while corn rose for the first time in four sessions.
“There is some short-covering in the market today but overall prices are depressed due to large South American supplies,” said Dennis Voznesenski, associate director for agricultural economics at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
“On top of that there are improved planting prospects in the US versus 2023 for the 2024 season.”
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was up 1% at $11.84-1/4 a bushel, as of 0433 GMT, the highest since Feb. 14.
Wheat slid 0.3% to $5.57-1/4 a bushel, after dropping earlier in the session to $5.55 a bushel, the lowest since Nov. 16. Corn added 0.5% to $4.18-3/4 a bushel.
Large speculators increased their net short position in CBOT corn futures in the week ended Feb. 13, 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 trimmed their net short position in soybeans.
Brazil 2023/2024 soybean crop forecast trimmed
Brazil’s 2023/24 soybean harvest had reached 32% of the planted area as of last Thursday, agribusiness consultancy AgRural said on Monday, up 9 percentage points from the previous week and above the 25% seen at the same time a year earlier.
The US Department of Agriculture last week said that US soybean ending stocks would climb to 435 million bushels in 2024/25, the highest since 2019/20, and US corn stocks would balloon to 2.532 billion bushels, the most since the 1987/88 season.
In the wheat market, Russian export prices continued to fall last week amid weakening global prices and some growth in shipments, analysts said.
The price of 12.5% protein Russian wheat scheduled for free-on-board (FOB) delivery late March was $219 a metric ton, down $5 from the previous week, the IKAR agriculture consultancy reported.
In news, Indonesian grain buyers are boosting imports of lower quality wheat as a decline in corn output last year following a severe drought linked to an El Nino weather pattern tightened the country’s animal feed supplies.
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