US soyabeans rose 1.4 percent early on Thursday as strong export demand spurred a wave of technical buying, traders said. Soyabean prices, which passed through key technical resistance points at the 30-day, 100-day and 200-day moving averages during Thursday's session, benefited from ongoing concerns about delays in moving recently harvested crops in South America to overseas buyers.
"The beat goes on," said Brian Rydlund, market analyst at CHS Hedging. "Even if you can buy these alleged cheap beans from down there, you wonder when you are going to get them, if you ever do." Wheat prices also firmed as the benchmark Chicago Board of Trade contract's decline to an eight-month low earlier this week has made US soft red winter wheat the cheapest for importers.
Corn followed wheat and soyabeans higher, receiving additional support from end-of-month short covering. Speculators have piled shorts onto their corn position throughout February on expectations of large US plantings this spring. At 10:09 am CST (1609 GMT), CBOT March soyabeans were up 20-3/4 cents at $14.78-1/4 a bushel. CBOT March corn was up 6 cents at $7.15-1/2 a bushel and CBOT March wheat gained 8-1/2 cents to $7.12-3/4 a bushel.
For the month, soyabean futures are up 0.6 percent. Corn futures have fallen 3.1 percent, on track for their sixth drop in seven months. CBOT wheat has fallen 8.4 percent in February, in line for its biggest drop since September 2011. The US Agriculture Department on Thursday morning said weekly export sales of soyabeans were 1.171 million tonnes, including 689,000 tonnes of old-crop supplies. Analysts were expecting soyabean export sales in a range from 750,000 to 1 million tonnes.
China was a big buyer of US soyabeans, accounting for 70 percent of the weekly sales. "The market is realising that supply is very tight and it is going to be a big challenge to get soyabeans and corn out of Brazil in time," said Victor Thianpiriya, agriculture strategist at ANZ in Singapore.
"Across wheat and corn markets, tight supply is going to support prices for the first half of the year until South America comes into the market." US wheat has become increasingly competitive and a tender announced by Saudi Arabia to purchase 110,000 tonnes of soft wheat and 440,000 tonnes of hard wheat could bring a fresh US sale. "Milling wheat market has been strongly supported by international demand over the past days as US traders sold milling wheat to China, Japan, Taiwan and Egypt," Arnaud Saulais of Starsupply Commodity Brokers in Geneva said.