The Chicago Board of Trade soyabean market sank early on Thursday amid financial worries after China's main stock index closed 3 percent lower, traders said. Weakness in the products added pressure to soyabeans.
Export sales from last week for soyaoil and soyameal were disappointing and another round of huge March deliveries underscored the weakness in the meal and oil cash markets.
Soyabeans and soyameal slipped below their 20-day moving averages and soyaoil broke its 50-day MA - after all three markets climbed to multi-year highs within the past week.
"Any time you get to historically high price levels you're going to get market action like this. You're in uncharted territory, or at least uncharted territory for quite a while. That brings a whole lot of emotion and uncertainty," said Randy Mittelstaedt, analyst with R.J. O'Brien, a Chicago trade house.
March soyabeans were down 27-1/4 cents at $7.46 per bushel by 11:35 am CST (1735 GMT). The back months were down 25 to 27 cents.
March soyameal was $6.50 per ton lower at $217.90, with the deferreds down $6.30 to $8.10. Soyaoil was 0.10 to 0.75 cent weaker, with March down 0.75 at 29.50 cents per lb. Commodity funds were featured sellers across the complex, with electronic volume heavy, traders said.
The US Agriculture Department said 516,500 tonnes of soyabeans (415,500 tonnes of old crop) were sold for export last week, compared to estimates 300,000 to 500,000 tonnes. Soyameal export sales (old and new crop) were a minus 4,100 tonnes due a cancellation from Jamaica for 5,000 tonnes of meal for delivery in 2007/08. Old-crop sales of 800 tonnes were a marketing year low.
Weekly soyaoil export sales were minus 8,900 tonnes of soyaoil (old crop), reflecting a cancellation of 10,300 tonnes from Mexico.
There were 885 March soyabean deliveries, 1,760 March soyameal deliveries and 4,344 soyaoil postings.