CANBERRA: Chicago wheat futures held steady on Thursday after a third large Chinese purchase of US wheat in three days pushed prices to a four-month high in the previous session.
Soyabeans rose slightly and corn inched lower after both fell on Wednesday as forecasts for rain in major exporter Brazil eased concerns about hot and dry conditions damaging crops.
The most-active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 0.1% at $6.33 a bushel by 0411 GMT after reaching $6.49-1/2 on Wednesday, its highest since Aug. 9.
The contract is up about 12.5% since market open on Nov. 28. Wednesday’s US government confirmation of private sales of 372,000 metric tons of soft red winter wheat to China took total US sales this week to China to more than 1 million tons, the biggest one-week total to China since July 2014.
The Chinese purchases triggered a flurry of short-covering by investors who had bet heavily on price falls. Commodity funds were net buyers of CBOT wheat again on Wednesday, traders said. “Ten days ago, US wheat was the most competitive in the world. It’s now well above EU and Black Sea prices,” Ole Houe, director of advisory services at Australian agricultural brokerage IKON Commodities, said. Either non-US wheat had to rally to CBOT levels, which it so far shows little sign of doing, or Chicago futures needed to fall back, he said.
Meanwhile, the state of winter crops in Russia is better on average than last year, with only 4% in poor and thinned condition, a meteorological official said on Wednesday.
For 2023, the agriculture ministry expects Russia to bring in its second-largest harvest, behind the 2022 record of almost 158 million tons.
Plentiful cheap supply from Russia pushed CBOT wheat to a three-year low of $5.40 in September. In other crops, CBOT soyabeans were up 0.2% at $12.97-3/4 a bushel while corn fell 0.1% to $4.83-3/4 a bushel.
Trade group Anec said Brazilian grain traders will export record volumes of both soyabeans and corn in 2023, reflecting a bumper crop and strong demand from China.
Anec said it expected Brazilian corn exports to reach 55.95 million metric tons, up 25% year-on-year, and soyabean exports to reach 101.2 million tons, up about 30% from 2022. Corn and soyabean were also pressured by weather forecasts predicting rain over the next two weeks for Brazil and parts of South America. Traders await updated crop estimates on Thursday from Brazilian government agency Conab as well as monthly supply/demand reports due Friday from the USDA. Analysts surveyed by Reuters expect the USDA to lower its estimates of Brazil’s 2023/24 soyabean and corn crops.
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