January 20, 2006

 

CBOT Corn Review on Thursday: Slips in narrow-range trade

 

 

Corn futures traded at the Chicago Board of Trade ended fractionally lower Thursday in choppy trading as a lack of fresh fundamental news kept prices within narrow ranges, floor sources said. Late fund selling helped push futures into negative territory, they added.

 

March corn settled 3/4 cent lower at US$2.05 per bushel, May corn also ended down 3/4 cent to US$2.14 3/4, and July corn fell 1/2 cent to US$2.23 3/4.

 

"The market was at a stalemate here today," said Shawn McCambridge, senior grain analyst with Prudential Financial in Chicago. The downside was limited by commercial support at this level, but there was not much fundamental news to move the market one way of the other, he said.

 

Corn futures have eroded since the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports last week and were due for a correction, a floor analyst said. However, the market was unable to fill a downside gap on daily technical charts and ignored stronger wheat futures, he added.

 

Wheat futures settled at firm levels on talk of exports of U.S. wheat to Iraq. March wheat settled 4 cents higher at US$3.26 1/2.

 

On technical charts, March corn remained below most major moving averages and below the downside gap created in Tuesday's session.

 

Cargill bought 1,300 March on Thursday; Calyon Financial bought 300 March; FC Stonnee bought 200 March; Fimat bought 200 March and 200 May; Tenco bought 1,200 March; Man Financial bought 300 May and 200 July; and local option traders bought 1,500 May.

 

Calyon Financial sold 1,000 March on Thursday; Fimat sold 1,800 March; the Refco division of Man Financial sold 2,000 March and 1,000 July; and O'Connor sold 200 May and 200 July.

 

Commodity fund selling was estimated at 7,000 contracts.

 

Oat futures finished mostly higher, with the March contract gaining 2 3/4 cents US$1.87 3/4.

 

Ethanol futures settled mostly higher. The April contract rose 3 cents and settled at US$2.40 per gallon.

 

The USDA is scheduled to release the weekly export sales report at 7:30 a.m. CST (1330 GMT) Friday. Analysts contacted by Dow Jones Newswires expect weekly export sales between 700,000 and 1.1 million metric tonnes. The report was delayed a day due to the holiday Monday.