Chicago Board of Trade corn futures firmed on Tuesday on speculative short-covering after early losses on forecasts for a record 2004 US corn crop, brokers said.
"The market has discounted an awful lot of (US corn) production in here, with the big yields we have been hearing since the start of the harvest," said Dale Gustafson, analyst at Citigroup.
CBOT corn futures were last up 1-3/4 cents per bushel to unchanged, with December up 1-3/4 cents at $2.04-1/2 after matching its contract low at $2.02-1/2. March was last up 1-1/4 cents at $2.15.
Funds bought at least 2,700 contracts, led by Rand Financial and Tenco Inc.'s purchases of 1,000 December, brokers said. Cargill Inc. sold 600 December.