Chicago | Reuters – U.S. grain and soybean futures recovered from multi-week lows on Monday as broad-based buying and an influx of money from commodity funds boosted prices at the start of the year.
Equities, metals and energy markets also advanced after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“In general, it’s a risk-on trade, and we were pretty oversold coming in,” said Matt Wiegand, commodity broker for FuturesOne.
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The most-active corn contract Cv1 on the Chicago Board of Trade ended 7 cents higher at $4.44-1/2 per bushel and set a one-week high. The contract earlier fell to its lowest level since December 17.
CBOT soybean futures Sv1 closed up 16-1/4 cents at $10.62 per bushel, and wheat futures Wv1 finished 6 cents higher at $5.12-1/2 per bushel. On Friday, soybean and wheat prices hit their lowest levels since late October.
Commodity funds were net buyers of an estimated 23,000 corn contracts, 12,000 soybean contracts and 3,000 wheat contracts, traders said.
“Soybeans recouped part of Friday’s losses on bargain buying,” said Cheang Kang Wei, vice president at StoneX in Singapore.
Global supplies remained ample. Argentina and Australia were wrapping up bumper wheat harvests, and Brazil was starting to bring in what is forecast to be a record soybean crop.
U.S. farmers harvested a record-large corn crop last year, though strong export demand limited an increase in stocks. On January 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was slated to issue key crop reports, including data on U.S. grain and soy stocks as of December 1.
“We really front loaded corn shipments,” Wiegand said. “If that stocks number comes in light, that can give things a jolt.”
In other news, wheat traders continued to monitor Russia’s war in Ukraine, a major grain exporter.
Russia launched five missile strikes on Ukraine’s second-biggest city Kharkiv and attacked an enterprise owned by U.S. agricultural producer Bunge BG.N in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukrainian officials said.
-Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; Ella Cao, Daphne Zhang and Lewis Jackson in Beijing; and Gus Trompiz in Paris.
