February 14, 2008

 

CBOT Corn Review on Wednesday: Settles lower as wheat slump weighs

 

 

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures settled with thin losses Wednesday, kept on the defensive by continued weakness in wheat futures.

 

March corn settled 3/4 cent lower at US$4.97 per bushel, and Dec fell 1 cent to US$5.19 1/4.

 

The decline in wheat kept corn in negative territory most of the day, a commission house analyst said.

 

U.S. wheat futures ended with double-digit losses with the exception of nearby MGE spring wheat futures. MGE March spring wheat futures settled 90 cents higher to US$17.63 per bushel, the highest price ever recorded for any wheat future. CBOT March wheat fell 15 1/2 cents to US$9.91 1/2 per bushel.

 

Corn staged a recovery near the close, with March trading slightly higher as a rebound to higher levels in soybeans and firm crude oil prices helped supply support, the commission house analyst said. March soybeans settled 7 1/2 cents higher at US$13.28 1/2 per bushel.

 

Late weakness from wheat futures near the close however helped reverse the thin gains, a trader said. Corn remained in its role of a follower of other markets and couldn't overcome the negative tonnee in wheat, the trader said.

 

On daily technical charts, March ended below both its 10-day and 20-day moving averages.

 

In open auction trading, commodity fund selling was estimated at 1,000 contracts.

 

Corn price direction Thursday will key off of what happens in wheat futures as well as the level of weekly corn export sales, the trader said.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is scheduled to release the weekly export sales for the period ending Feb. 7 Thursday at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330GMT). Analysts expect sales between 550,000 metric tonnes-to-1.0 million tonnes. Sales last week were 1.105 million tonnes.

 

In options trading, FC Stonnee bought 1,000 December US$5.00 puts and sold 500 March US$5.10 calls. Tenco bought 500 December US$5.20 calls and sold 500 December US$6.40 calls and sold 500 December US$4.70 puts.

 

Oat futures settled with small-scale gains, boosted by light fund buying in a quiet session, an analyst said.

 

March oats gained 2 1/2 cents to US$3.44 per bushel.

 

Ethanol futures ended modestly higher. March ethanol gained 3 cents to US$2.19 per gallon and April also settled 3 cents higher at US$2.18.