Chicago | Reuters—Chicago Board of Trade corn futures turned lower on profit-taking after the benchmark contract Cv1 hit a six-month high in choppy trade ahead of the year’s end, market analysts said.
Soybean and wheat futures ticked higher, as traders squared their year-end positions to show profits on their books, analysts said.
“We’re also seeing some erratic movement in some of the thinner traded markets in these holiday conditions due to the low volume,” Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX, said in a client note.
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The CBOT’s most-active corn contract Cv1 ended down 1-3/4 cents to $4.52-1/4 a bushel after hitting its highest point since mid-June earlier in the session at $4.59.
The most-active soybean contract Sv1 finished up 2 cents at $9.91-3/4 per bushel, while wheat Wv1 rose 1-3/4 cents to settle at $5.48-1/4 a bushel.
The price moves were largely driven by year-end positioning, according to Karl Setzer, a partner at Consus Ag Consulting.
“We saw the session start out today with some short-covering,” said Setzer. But he said “once that was accomplished, traders were walking away from the market.”
Still, traders are keeping an eye on moisture concerns in Argentina’s corn- and soy-growing regions, where weather has been hot and dry, as well as in leading wheat producer Russia.
Hot, dry weather in Argentina, a major exporter of soy byproducts and corn, kept a floor under soybean and corn futures, with worries developing about potential stress on the crops in the coming weeks, according to Commodity Weather Group.
Conditions for winter wheat crops are also expected to worsen in Russia’s central and Volga areas in January as warmer-than-usual weather and excess moisture cause sprouts to keep growing during the winter, the state weather agency said Saturday. Continued growth during winter weakens winter crop sprouts, which need to experience a period of dormancy.
—Additional reporting Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Aurora Ellis
