By Kirk Maltais

--Wheat for December delivery fell 1.6% to $5.23 1/2 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Monday, putting a damper on a six-and-a-half-week rally that saw futures gain 15%.

--Corn for December delivery lost 1% to $3.87 1/4 a bushel.

--Soybeans for November delivery rose 0.1% to $9.33 1/4 a bushel.

HIGHLIGHTS

Sudden Pullback: Traders swooped in to collect on the steady rise in prices since September. "Wheat prices are under pressure after recent sharp gains as traders take profits amid a lack of fresh fodder to keep feeding the bulls," said Arlan Suderman of INTL FCStone. While winter wheat planting is on track, the spring wheat harvest has been a tad behind schedule, with traders looking to the weekly crop progress report for news.

Dollar Weakness Moderates: The US dollar spent much of the session weaker, before strengthening slightly by the end of the day. For grains, particularly wheat, dollar weakness is a source of support for futures, making exports of U.S. grains more desirable for foreign buyers. The dollar's turnaround weighed on futures at the end of the day.

No China Carry Through: A lack of confirmation of any new Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans put a drag on soybean CBOT futures. "No Chinese sales announcements produced selling from some of the faster moving bulls," AgResource said. Monday's grain export inspection report from the USDA showed only roughly 70,000 metric tons of soybeans being inspected for shipment to the Chinese mainland, well below normal levels.

INSIGHT

Lagging Corn Interest: The bearish sentiment surrounding U.S. corn hasn't changed, as the USDA's weekly export inspection figures showed U.S. corn is still well behind normal yearly rates of inspections. Corn inspections totaled 531,744 metric tons this week, within analysts' estimates but still putting the total amount inspected in this marketing year at 3.038 million tons, less than half of the 7.96 million tons inspected by this time last year.

Ethanol Demand Destruction: Small refinery exemptions as described in the EPA's latest proposal involving the Renewable Fuel Standard program are insufficient to fix damage to the ethanol industry done by granting more exemptions to gasoline blenders, said the American Farm Bureau Federation. "By proposing to utilize [Department of Energy]-recommended exemptions instead of actual exemptions in accounting for the billions of gallons of ethanol lost to SREs, this fix does little to restore the demand destruction caused by SREs and further undermines the RFS," said the bureau, calling the latest proposal a "bait and switch" by the Trump administration.

AHEAD

--The USDA will release its monthly cold storage report at 3 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

--The EIA releases its weekly update on ethanol production and inventories at 10:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

--The USDA will release its latest weekly export sales numbers at 8:30 a.m. EDT Thursday.

Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 21, 2019 16:04 ET (20:04 GMT)

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