The Chicago Board of Trade sobyean market fell early Wednesday on year-end profit taking, but recovered from its early lows after it slipped to a double bottom, traders said.
January soyabeans were 3 cents lower at $6.61-1/4 per bushel by 10:55 am CST (1655 GMT), after sliding to $6.52-3/4 - near its low of $6.51-1/4 made on November 17. The back months were 1 to 4 cents weaker.
There have been signs of speculators liquidating positions since Monday as open interest has fallen in corn, soyabean meal and soyabean oil over the past two sessions. A firmer US dollar and weak gold markets overnight were also bearish technical signals.
Good weather in South America for the new crop added to the softer tone. There also have been several private analysts raising their Brazilian soyabean crop estimates but they are near or below USDA's estimate for the country to produce 56 million tonnes.On Wednesday morning, the government's National Crop Supply Agency (Conab) forecast Brazil's 2006/07 soyabean crop at 54.7 million tonnes, up from 53.4 million last year.
Fresh export business lent some underlying support. USDA early Wednesday confirmed the sale of 120,000 tonnes of US soya to an unknown destination. CBOT December soyameal was steady at $184.30 per ton, January was down 10 cents at $187.70. December soyaoil was 0.45 cent lower at 28.47 per lb, January was 0.41 weaker at 28.93 - slipping below its 20-day moving average of 28.95 cents.
In the overnight delivery market, there were 975 December soyameal postings and 2,074 December soyaoil. They were met by scattered stoppers, with the biggest stopper of meal a USA Trading customer taking 290. There was a strong commercial stopper of oil as the Term house account took 419 contracts.