Grain, Soybean Futures Rise; Traders Watch Argentina Weather
November 17 2017 - 4:00PM
Dow Jones News
By Benjamin Parkin
Grain and soybean futures ended the week with a bounce.
Analysts said that traders had exhausted reasons to sell this
week, prompting a correction on Friday.
"Trade needs more negative news to drive the market lower," said
Karl Setzer, an analyst at MaxYield Cooperative. "This may be hard
to accomplish at the present time."
In particular, speculative players like hedge funds are already
holding large overall short positions in corn and wheat markets,
leaving little room for further selling without new indications of
real-world factors to drive prices lower.
Meanwhile, soybean traders were increasingly concerned with dry
weather in Argentina, a major crop producer. The Commodity Weather
Group said that the center of the country would continue to dry out
for the remainder of the month, stressing around half of the
country's corn and soybeans.
That helped create buying interest in the soybean market on
Friday. January oilseed contracts rose 1.9% to $9.90 1/2 a bushel
at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Further north in Brazil, however, wetter weather is allaying
concerns about the condition of the crops. Rainfall is expected to
pick up as Brazil heads into its most important growing period for
soybeans later this year, said Ana Luiza Lodi, a Brazil-based
grain-and-oilseed analyst at INTL FCStone Inc.
"At least for now, we're not seeing any threats from the
weather," Ms. Lodi said.
CBOT December corn futures rose 1.9% to $3.43 a bushel, while
December wheat climbed 1.4% to $4.27 1/4 a bushel.
The U.S. dollar fell on Friday, helping make U.S. crops cheaper
for global buyers, while higher crude oil futures attracted
speculative players to agricultural commodity markets.
Write to Benjamin Parkin at benjamin.parkin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 17, 2017 15:45 ET (20:45 GMT)
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