Chicago Board of Trade rough rice futures tumbled to three-week low Tuesday on follow-through speculative selling, tracking the weakness in the wheat market, traders said. Most of the CBOT agricultural markets were down on a setback from recent highs, including rice which scaled to a 10-year peak this season.
November rice closed 13 cents per hundredweight weaker at $11.40 per hundredweight. January ended 11-1/2 down at $11.74-1/2 and March settled 10 lower at $12.06. There was heavy speculative selling in November from $11.41 to $11.39 of roughly 300 contracts. As the market bottomed, commercial buying surfaced out of MF Global and RJ O'Brien, traders said.
Also weighing on prices was harvest-hedge pressure, traders said. This year's harvest was nearing completion. USDA reported late Monday that 89 percent of the rice crop was off the field - near the five-year pace of 90 percent by mid-October.
Volume was large estimated at 2,529 futures and 171 options, compared to 1,658 futures and 35 options that traded on Monday. Roughly 45 percent of Tuesday's trade was made in spreads, with firms rolling their November positions before the delivery period starts at month's end.