Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures ended higher on Friday on forecasts for potential crop-damaging cold this weekend and speculative short-covering, brokers said.
Soybean futures settled up 4 cents to 8 cents per bushel, with November up 7-1/2 cents at $5.34-1/2, well above this week's one-year low of $5.22-1/2, and January up 7-1/4 cents at $5.42. Commodity funds bought about 3,500 lots, and commercials were net sellers, brokers said.
Cargill Inc sold 800 January $6.00 calls while Tenco Inc spread 500 November/July, they noted.
"There's some apprehension about frost-damage, and we'll certainly be checking Monday's crop reports to see the official assessment," one CBOT broker said late Friday, referring to Monday afternoon's USDA crop harvest and conditions updates.
"But we're also seeing a bit of technical buying, as we have all week," he added.
Forecasts called for possible frost on Saturday and early next week in the US Midwest, a problematic outlook as some soybeans across the northern US Midwest are immature due to adverse growing conditions in August, brokers said.
In Minnesota, the third-largest US soy-growing state, only 17 percent of the crop was mature as of last Sunday, well behind the five-year average of 62 percent.
Support also stemmed from Thursday's US Department of Agriculture report of the sale of 110,000 tonnes of US soybeans to an unknown buyer for 2004/05 delivery, brokers said. CIF midday soy basis bids were firm, exporters noted.
Overall, CBOT soy gains were limited on Friday by expectations for a very large US soybean crop this year, brokers said.
The USDA on September 10 pegged the 2004 US soy crop at 2.836 billion bushels, but analysts have since estimated a crop closer to 3 billion bushels.
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