U.S. wheat drops on fundamentals; corn, soy pressured by profit-taking
U.S. wheat futures slid 1.8 percent on Thursday to their lowest since mid-April as bearish fundament…U.S. wheat futures slid 1.8 percent on Thursday to their lowest since mid-April as bearish fundamentals, highlighted by reports of strong crop prospects in the U.S. Plains and weak export demand sparked selling by investment funds, traders said.
Corn and soybeans also fell, with corn hitting a 10-day low as investment funds locked in profits from recent rallies.
“The market is starting to struggle a bit,” said Karl Setzer, a market analyst at MaxYield Cooperative. “It needs something fresh. A bull market needs to be fed and we are just not feeding it right now.”
At 10:45 a.m. CDT (1545 GMT), Chicago Board of Trade soft red winter wheat for July delivery was down 8-1/4 cents at $4.63 a bushel. K.C. July hard red winter wheat was 5 cents lower at $4.52-3/4 a bushel.
Crop scouts on the second day of the annual three-day tour of Kansas hard red winter wheat fields projected an average yield of 49.3 bushels per acre in the southwestern portion of the state, up from tour findings of 34.5 bushels a year ago. The tour’s prior five-year average for the same area is 35.9 bushels per acre.
The tour, which also found above-average yields on Tuesday in northern Kansas, is scheduled to release a final yield forecast for the country’s top wheat-producing state on Thursday.
Adding to the bearish picture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier on Thursday said that weekly old-crop export sales of wheat totaled just 178,900 metric tons, down from 351,800 metric tons a week ago. New-crop wheat export sales of 140,000 metric tons fell below market forecasts.
CBOT July soybeans were down 9-1/2 cents at $10.24-1/2 a bushel.
Better-than-expected export sales pushed soybeans higher early in the trading session, but traders locked in profits after the market failed to break through the weekly high.
Concerns about crop losses in Argentina kept the declines in check. Heavy rains from the El Niño weather pattern that lashed Argentina’s pampas in April have already wiped out 785,000 hectares of this year’s soy crop, and another 700,000 are in danger, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Wednesday.
CBOT July corn was off 3-1/2 cents at $3.73-1/4 a bushel. Technical support was seen at the 50-day moving average.
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