Soyabean futures at the Chicago Board of Trade were firm early on Wednesday in choppy consolidation trading, traders said. Soya opened weak on harvest pressure then turned firm on a light bout of speculative short-covering, they said.
At 10:09 am CDT (1509 GMT), CBOT soya was up 1-1/4 to 4 cents per bushel. November was up 1-1/4 at $5.85-3/4 per bushel.
Pit sources said Refco Inc and DT Trading each sold 200 November at the open then Rand Financial and Calyon Financial each bought 200 November.
Traders said there was a lack of bullish momentum in soya because of the aggressive harvest of a large US soya crop.
Meteorlogix weather on Wednesday said scattered rains this week may cause harvest delays but the added moisture will favour soft red winter wheat and major delays to the soya harvest appears unlikely.
Soyabean traders and market analysts continue to deal with bearish price implications from reports of bigger-than-expected yields of soya in the US harvest.
USDA on Tuesday revised its estimate of corn and soyabean losses from drought in the US crop belt to $701 million vs. the previous $1.3 billion. USDA said the downward revision was due to very large increases in yields for corn and soya.
Soyameal was unchanged to 70 cents per ton higher with the market following the choppy trend in soya.
At 10:14 am CDT (1514 GMT), December was unchanged at $171.00 per ton. Soyaoil was 0.11 cent per lb lower to 0.05 higher with December down 0.07 at 24.37 cents per lb.