Wheat, Soybean Futures Slip Amid Conflicting Forecasts
April 27, 2011
Wheat and soybean futures finished mostly lower Thursday on the Chicago Board of Trade amid conflicting forecasts about the severity and length of a warm spell descending upon the Midwest. Corn ended mixed. Wheat for September delivery rose 1.25 cents to $4.573 a bushel; December corn rose 0.25 cent to $3.493 a bushel; September oats fell 1.25 cent to $1.97 a bushel; and November soybeans fell 5 cents to $7.84 a bushel. Soybeans futures led the retreat, eroding gains that came a day earlier amid forecasts from the National Weather Service for hot, dry weather in key growing regions over the next 10 days. But private forecasters Thursday said the hot weather will be delayed until early next week and likely will be followed by good rainfall toward the end of the week. Soybeans are entering a crucial growing period in which the pods fill out and require moisture for maximum growth. While the crop probably would not be hurt significantly by a lack of rainfall in the next 10 days, investors had been concerned the weather pattern could hold. The new forecasts indicate that temperatures expected to climb as high as 90 degrees will not be hot enough, or last long enough, to stress the crops significantly, said Smith Barney analyst Dalene Deal. ``The cool is going to be lasting just a little bit longer and the rain on the other end is coming just a little bit quicker,'' Mr. Curran said. ``That's taking away a lot of the concern.'' Wheat futures finished mostly lower after soybeans lost ground and amid a lack of export interest. The Agriculture Department's weekly export sales report revealed slumping exports and pointed to little interest on the horizon. In other commodity markets: ENERGY: Crude-oil and petroleum-products closed modestly lower Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, testing support levels in a modest correction of the recent bullish trend. September crude oil ended down 22 cents at $21.90 a barrel, after dropping 25 cents Wednesday. October crude oil lost 18 cents. September crude hit a lifetime high Tuesday at $22.43 and retested the market during Wednesday's overnight session before slipping lower. September unleaded gasoline lost 0.53 cent to settle at 61.96 cents a gallon. September heating oil fell 0.61 cent to 59.80 cents a gallon. Much of the activity in the crude market was technically motivated, with little fresh fundamental news entering the market to influence prices. However, concerns that the emergence of Iraqi crude oil in the coming weeks may pressure prices lower could be forcing bullish positions out of the futures market, traders said. Reports that Coastal Corp. was seeking to charter a crude tanker to pick up Iraqi oil in early September led to some increased selling. Meanwhile, news that a fire at British Petroleum's Lima, Ohio, refinery shut a 36,000 barrel-a-day fluid catalytic cracker there appeared to lend some support to the products, analysts said, though it had little lasting impact. PRECIOUS METALS: Precious metals settled mostly firmer on the Comex division of Nymex Thursday. Traders said that a rally in the silver market touched off sympathy buying that pulled up platinum and limited losses in the thin gold market. December gold finished unchanged at $391.70 an ounce. September silver ended up 4.2 cents to $5.087 an ounce. ``The market was quiet until we saw some commodity fund buying of silver, which pushed the market up and lent support to platinum,'' said Bettina Stivers, metal analyst with Prudential Securities in New York. The decline of Nymex silver stocks by 2.1 million ounces late Wednesday provoked some of the buying, Ms. Stivers added. And funds bought mainly ``when they assessed the situation and saw that the market wasn't really crashing'' early Thursday, she said. The World Gold Council earlier Thursday released its second-quarter report, which showed that demand during the quarter was 675 metric tons, down 2% from the same period in 2010. Sharp increases in demand were seen in Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia.
