Wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade ended modestly higher on Monday after a wild session in which nearby contracts rose their daily trading limit of 30 cents a bushel before retreating and briefly trading lower near the close.
Traders attributed the market's gyrations to uncertainty about the impact of frigid temperatures that blanketed much of the US winter wheat belt over the Easter holiday weekend, threatening the crop.
"There is a lot of uncertainty as to how much damage actually took place and it will take a week or two before that is known," Prudential Financial analyst Shawn McCambridge said.
CBOT May wheat closed up 2-1/2 cents at $4.47-1/2 per bushel, after trading in a huge range from $4.41-3/4 to $4.75. July was up 3-1/2 cents at $4.62 and December was up 3-3/4 cents at $4.86-1/2. Temperatures dropped below freezing over the weekend in a wide area, from the southern Plains to the Mississippi River Delta to the eastern Midwest.
Agronomists said it was cold enough to damage wheat in the jointing and heading stages of growth. "We're in the process of trying to collect information. Oftentimes symptoms won't show up for a couple days," said Jason Kelley, a University of Arkansas agronomist.
"At least three-quarters of the (Arkansas) crop... was in an area that got cold enough that it could cause some problems," he said. However, market analysts noted wheat's reputation as a hardy crop that has rebounded from cold weather before.
"Everybody is very nervous about buying rallies on a freeze in wheat, after what happened in 1997," Fortis Clearing Americas analyst Charlie Sernatinger said. He was referring to a year when the US Plains wheat crop was hit by freeze, but later recovered.
"The market rallied $1 a bushel and then came back down $1.50 a bushel, and we ended up with record yields," he said. Commodity funds were net buyers of 1,000 contracts on the day, traders said. Firms were rolling May positions forward, a feature that helped boost trading volume. The CBOT estimated the day's volume at 129,033 wheat futures and 16,019 options.
Weekend export news was quiet and weekly export data from the US Agriculture Department was disappointing. The government reported export inspections of US wheat last week at 12.8 million bushels, below trade estimates for 15 million to 20 million.
Trade data issued Friday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in its CIT supplement showed large speculators (excluding index funds) widened their net short position in CBOT wheat to 38,373 contracts as of April 3. Index funds trimmed their net long position to 192,718 contracts.
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