Chicago Board of Trade corn futures were range-bound and choppy on Wednesday amid a lack of fresh news, traders said.
Follow-through buying from Tuesday's higher close lent support. But firms continued to roll forward their March positions before first notice day on February 27, which kept prices within a tight range.
CBOT corn futures were steady to up a penny by 10:45 am CST.
The March contract was unchanged at $2.73 a bushel, trading between $2.71 support and $2.75 resistance.
Open interest in March is huge, at roughly 290,000 contracts as of Wednesday's open. Fimat Futures was the featured early spreader with 2,000 May/March and 400 July/March.
There was some support stemming from China's absence from the world corn export market, which continued to give US exporters hopes of increasing their share of corn sales in the Asian market, traders said. South Korea, which typically sources corn from China, set a tender overnight for 55,000 tonnes of food-grade corn, non-GMO, optional-origin, for May arrival.
Weakness in the US dollar helped to underpin the market as it made US grain more affordable for foreign buyers.
US corn is currently quoted at about $188-$189 a tonne C&F Southeast Asia, which is a couple dollars lower than old-crop South American corn, Asian traders said.
The CBOT oat market was a penny lower across the board, keeping within its recent trading range amid a lack of fresh news, traders said. CBOT March oats were down 1 cent at $1.55 a bushel.