[UPDATED] Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures hit nearly a seven-week high on Monday as uncertainty about Brazilian planting weather and the size of the U.S. harvest sparked a round of fund-driven short-covering, analysts said.
U.S. corn and wheat futures followed the firmer trend. Higher Russian cash wheat prices lent support.
CBOT November soybean futures SX24 settled up 27-1/4 cents at $10.39-1/4 a bushel after climbing to $10.41-3/4, the contract’s highest price since Aug. 6. CBOT December corn CZ24 ended up 11-3/4 cents at $4.13-1/2 a bushel and December wheat WZ24 rose 14 cents to finish at $5.82-1/2 a bushel.
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U.S. grains: Wheat futures rise on supply snags in top-exporter Russia
U.S. wheat futures closed higher on Thursday on concerns over the limited availability of supplies for export in Russia, analysts said.
Soybeans rose on worries about crop weather in Brazil, the world’s top supplier, as well as the U.S., the second-largest exporter. Commodity funds hold sizable net short positions in CBOT soybean and corn futures, leaving the markets open to short-covering rallies, particularly near the end of the month and quarter.
With the U.S. harvest under way, market players await more harvested yield data to determine whether a hot and dry finish to the Midwest growing season affected yields. The USDA this month kept its national soybean yield estimate unchanged at a record-high 53.2 bushels per acre.
“There is some suspicion that we could see lower yields – not materially so, but the arrow is pointing down, whereas 30 days ago, the arrow was still pointing up,” said Terry Linn, an analyst with Linn & Associates in Chicago.
After the market closed, the USDA said the U.S. corn harvest was 14 per cent complete and the soybean harvest was 13% complete, ahead of their respective five-year averages of 11 per cent and eight per cent.
In Brazil, dry weather is delaying the start of seeding. Soybean planting was 0.9 per cent complete by last Thursday, consultancy AgRural said, below last year’s 1.9 per cent.
CBOT wheat futures rose on firmer cash prices and weather risks around the world. Russian wheat export prices edged up slightly last week, and analysts anticipate further gains as export volumes have slowed.
European trade association Coceral on Friday cut its estimate of this year’s grain crop in the European Union and Britain.
“Wheat is seeing support today from poor crop weather in several regions following reports of poor harvests in Europe,” said Matt Ammermann, a commodity risk manager at StoneX. “Parts of the Black Sea region are too dry along with Australia, some of the U.S. Plains and Argentina.”
—Additional reporting for Reuters by Michael Hogan in Hamburg and Naveen Thukral in Singapore.
