September 9, 2006

 

CBOT Corn Review on Friday: Settles little changed in thin trade

 

 

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures ended mostly higher Friday in light trading as some market participants evened up their positions after Thursday's gains and ahead of the weekend, a floor source said.

 

September corn rose 1 cent to US$2.31 3/4 cents per bushel, and December finished 1/4 cent higher at US$2.46. e-CBOT day session volume in December was 32,931 contracts.

 

Light follow through buying helped support prices early in the session, sources said. In addition, "there were a lot of people who tried to buy corn and sell wheat this morning and it kind of failed," said Roy Huckabay, executive vice president at the Linn Group. It's going to be hard to get corn to go anywhere with the reports due out next week, he added.

 

In a Dow Jones Newswire survey of 20 analysts, the average 2006-07 corn production estimate was 10.996 billion bushels, slightly higher than the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 10.976 billion bushel estimate in August. The average yield estimate was 152.5 bushels per acre, slightly higher than the 152.2 bushels forecast in August by the USDA.

 

The USDA is scheduled to release its September crop production and supply and demand reports on Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. CDT.

 

Spillover technical buying also supported the market early in the session but when December couldn't trade above US$2.48, light profit taking emerged ahead of the weekend to trim the gains, a commission house broker said.

 

After the market retraced the early gains trading was thin and choppy until the closing bell, the broker added.

 

Weekly corn export sales were near the low end of analyst expectations and had little impact. Sales totaled 913,800 metric tonnes for the week ended Aug. 31 within the 900,000-1.4 million tonnes expected by analysts.

 

Buyers Friday included Shatkin, which bought 400 December, ABN Amro bought 300 December, and Man Financial bought 400 December.

 

Fimat sold 1,000 December, and ABN Amro sold 700 December.

 

Commodity fund buying was estimated at 1,000 contracts.

 

In spread trading Tenco bought 2,500 Dec-March and Fortis bought 2,000 Dec-Mar.

 

Oat futures settled higher as commission buying supported prices despite commercial selling, a floor source said.

 

September oats settled 2 cents higher at US$1.88 per bushel and December rose 1 1/4 cents to US$1.93 3/4.

 

Ethanol futures settled lower. October ethanol didn't trade and settled 4 cents lower at US$2.04 cents per gallon. November also didn't trade and declined 6 cents to US$2.02.

 

Friday afternoon the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is scheduled to release the latest commitment of traders report and on Monday, the USDA is scheduled to release the weekly export inspections at 10:00 a.m., and the weekly crop progress report at 3:00 p.m. CDT (2000 GMT).