Corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade were mixed early on Thursday with the market torn between bearish corn stocks numbers and bullish implications from some outlooks for hot weather by early next week in the US Midwest, traders said. "Corn wants to go down but it can't with the hot weather talk around," a trader said.
At 10:24 am CDT (1524 GMT), CBOT corn was up 2 to down 2-1/4 cents per bushel, with July down 1/2 at $3.35-1/2 per bushel. New-crop December was up 1-1/4 at $3.56-3/4 per bushel. Fortis Clearing Americas sold 2,000 December corn and traders said most of the buying in corn futures stemmed from the e-cbot electronic trading platform.
Corn/wheat spreading and spillover support from a rally in soy also helped give corn futures some buoyancy despite the release early Thursday of bearish corn stocks numbers by the US Department of Agriculture.
USDA early Thursday in its July supply/demand report pegged new-crop 2007/08 US ending corn stocks at 1.502 billion bushels, above an average of analysts' estimates for 1.383 billion and above USDA's forecast in June for 997 million. The new-crop year will end next August 2008. Oat futures were up 1-1/2 cents per bushel, with September up 1-1/2 at $2.69 per bushel.