Wheat prices fall, soybeans up

FE Team | Published: December 11, 2023 23:52:10

HAMBURG, Dec 11 (Reuters): Chicago wheat slipped on Monday from last week's four-month highs as investment funds showed few signs of exiting bearish positions despite the biggest US wheat sales to China in years.
Soybeans rose on concerns about Brazilian weather. Corn was hit by spillover weakness from wheat.
Chicago Board of Trade most-active wheat fell 1.3 per cent to $6.23-1/4 a bushel at 1209 GMT after touching its highest since Aug. 9 last week. Soybeans rose 0.4 per cent to $13.10-1/4 a bushel, corn fell 0.2 per cent to $4.84-1/4 a bushel.
The sale of 1,120,000 metric tonnes of US wheat to China last week pushed Chicago prices up.
Speculators and funds hold a historically heavy net short and have not shown signs of major purchases to exit the positions, traders said.
"Wheat is being burdened today by the large investment fund short position and also by the possibility that there will not be such enormous sales of US wheat to China in coming days as we saw last week," said Matt Ammermann, StoneX commodity risk manager. "Fund buying for short covering of the positions in wheat has been pretty modest and was not as strong as some had anticipated."
"The market is also watching the wheat demand side with new purchase tenders from Algeria and Tunisia."
Soybeans fell on Friday after a positive forecast of Brazil's crop from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Corn is seeing some spillover weakness from wheat after the USDA on Friday had not really caused major fireworks for corn," Ammermann said.
"Soybeans are being strengthened today by weather forecasts in Brazil which do not signal enough rain as hoped, while recent rain in Brazil was not as heavy as forecast. But Brazil is still heading for a good crop and if rain does arrive the crop should be ok."