Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade soy fell on Wednesday after hitting a one-month low as traders awaited a U.S. Department of Agriculture supply and demand report and Brazil’s Conab crop forecast.
Analysts have been looking to the Thursday reports to make sense of previously diverging USDA and Conab estimates on Brazilian crops. Corn and wheat rose as traders adjusted positions.
“A lot of market participants just think there’s more soybeans than what Conab is talking about,” said Michael Cordonnier of Soybean & Corn Advisor.
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The USDA report is projected to show 2023-24 U.S. corn ending stocks falling to 2.102 billion bushels from 2.172 billion last month, according to a Reuters survey of analysts. They predicted wheat and soybean stocks will rise.
“We’re kind of bracing for a bit of a bearish report,” said Ted Seifried, vice president of the Zaner Group.
“If we don’t get something bullish out of it, I think we could be in trouble until we get some sort of weather issue.”
Good weather had assisted the corn crop in Argentina, said Cordonnier, although he cautioned that corn stunt disease was impacting yields there.
“Everybody’s expecting the later planted corn in Argentina to have a much lower yield,” he said.
After markets closed, Argentina’s Rosario grains exchange cut its forecast for the 2023/24 corn harvest to 50 million metric tons from 57 million previously, citing spiroplasma corn stunt disease carried by leafhoppers.
Most-active CBOT corn Cv1 rose 3 cents to $4.34 – 1/4 a bushel, while soybeans Sv1 fell 9-3/4 cents to $11.64 – 3/4 a bushel. CBOT wheat Wv1 rose 3/4 cents to $5.58 – 1/2 a bushel.
The USDA confirmed private sales of 254,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans for delivery to undisclosed destinations in the marketing year that will begin on Sept. 1, 2024.
—Additional reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek in Chicago, Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore
