Chicago soybeans, corn and wheat futures stumble on farmer sales, weekly dollar gains

CHICAGO: Chicago soybean, wheat and corn futures tumbled on Friday as a flurry of farmer sales and a strong dollar weighed on the market, analysts said.

The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) settled down 20-1/4 cents at $9.91-3/4 per bushel. Most-active CBOT March soft red winter wheat settled down 16-1/2 cents at $5.29-1/4, having hit life-of-contract lows at $5.27-1/2 during the session. CBOT most-active March corn settled down 8-3/4 cents at $4.50-3/4 per bushel.

All three commodities had earlier in the week climbed to levels that were hard to justify given current fundamentals, said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX. A spate of farmer selling in the US and South America has pressured futures in recent days, Suderman said.

A strong dollar continued to weigh on wheat in particular, even as the dollar dipped for the day. The greenback had its best weekly performance since early November on expectations that the US economy will continue to outperform its peers globally and US interest rates will remain relatively high in 2025.

Adding pressure to futures, weekly export sales of corn, soybeans and wheat were all below expectations, according to Friday’s US Department of Agriculture report. The government agency reported wheat export sales for the week ended Dec. 26 at 140,600 metric tons, below estimates for 200,000 to 500,000 metric tons, according to a Reuters poll.

It reported 777,000 metric tons of corn sales compared with expectations of 800,000-1,400,000 tons and sales of 484,700 tons of soybeans compared with expectations of 500,000-1,200,000 tons. Light trade volumes caused price moves to be more dramatic in the days immediately following the New Year’s holiday, Suderman said, but he expected volatility to die down when trading resumes on Monday.