The Chicago Board of Trade soyabean market ended mixed and range-bound on Monday, recovering from sell-off as it followed corn which recovered going into the close, traders said. September soyabeans closed 1/4 cent higher at $8.11-3/4 per bushel while new-crop November ended 1/2 cent weaker at $8.27-1/4.
December corn settled 3 cents up at $3.48-3/4 per bushel, boosted late as traders covered short positions after a quiet, range-bound session. The session November soya fell 9-1/4 cents to $8.18-1/2 pressured by expectations for a high-yielding US soyabean crop after heavy weekend rains, traders said.
"There was fund liquidation after good rains over the weekend especially in the upper Midwest," said analyst Terry Really with Citicorp. More than 6 inches of rain fell in some areas of the upper Midwest over the weekend. Additional showers were expected this week, raising some concerns that the northern Corn Belt may be getting too much rain which is causing some localised areas to flood, traders said.
Traders also kept an eye on the volatile US stock market as an indicator of market direction. Wall Street was choppy on Monday but more stable than last week amid the turmoil in the US supreme mortgage sector and prompted the Federal Reserve to cut its discount rates to banks by a half percentage point.
The products closed mixed with soyaoil losing ground to soyameal due meal/oil spreading and the sell-off in the New York crude oil as it appeared Hurricane Dean would miss US Gulf refineries and oil rigs.
Soyameal closed mostly higher up $2 to down 20 cents per ton. September meal ended $1.60 higher at $220.40. The soyabean oil market settled 0.10 to 0.40 cent per lb. weaker, with September down 0.40 at 34.99 cents. Commodity funds were even in soyabeans, bought 1,000 soyameal contracts and sold 1,000 soyaoil, traders said. Traders expected USDA to keep overall soyabean ratings steady for the week on Monday's crop report released at 4 pm EDT.
Some improvement in the north due to mild weather last week could be offset by a drop in soya conditions in south-eastern Corn Belt and Delta where it's been hot and dry. Scouts on an annual US crop tour were inspecting Midwest soyabean fields this week. On two different legs of the tour one in northern Ohio and another in south-east South Dakota soyabeans seemed to be faring better than corn, benefiting from August rains, the scouts said.
USDA said 9.1 million bushels of soyabeans inspected for export last week vs. estimates for 4 million-10 million. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Friday that large speculators expanded their net long soyabean position by roughly 5,200 contracts to 91,500 in the week ended August 14, according to the supplemental report.
In soyaoil, they cut their net long position by 6,900 lots to 41,700 in the supplemental report. Soyameal futures/options large speculators increased their net long position by 3,700 lots to 45,800 contracts.