By Michael Hirtzer
CHICAGO, March 25 (Reuters) – U.S. wheat fell for the third
straight session on Wednesday, pressured by technical selling
and forecasts for rains needed in the parched southern U.S.
Plains growing region.
But prices trimmed their losses while corn edged higher and
soybeans lower in a choppy session at the Chicago Board of
Trade. The narrow changes could characterize the trade until
next week, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture is due to
release one of the most important crop reports of the year.
“We’re spinning our wheels and going nowhere fast,” said Tom
Fritz, analyst at brokerage EFG Group in Chicago. “(Wheat) had a
nice correction from the recent high and we’re just looking at
bottom-fishing.”
Scattered showers were forecast in the Plains wheat belt but
were likely to miss the driest areas of Kansas and Oklahoma,
agriculture meteorologists said.
Most-active CBOT May wheat finished 4-1/2 cents lower
at $5.19 per bushel, down nearly 4 percent from Monday’s more
than one-month high.
Corn for May delivery ended up 1-3/2 cents at $3.95
per bushel, the highest since Feb. 27 even as the contract hit
upside resistance at its 100- and 200-day moving averages.
“Corn perked up again on light short covering and
intermarket spreading, with little fresh news around,” ED&F Man
Capital analyst Charlie Sernatinger said in a note to clients.
CBOT May soybeans traded in positive and negative
territory before settling down 3 cents at $9.78-3/4.
Ongoing harvests in South America continued to weigh on
soybeans. Brazilian analyst lifted its estimate of the soy
harvest there to 95.8 million tonnes, up from 94.7 a month ago.
USDA’s prospective plantings report, slated for release on
Tuesday, may show U.S. farmers have cut corn sowings and
increased soybean plantings on hopes of better earnings, a
Reuters poll showed.
“Corn is being supported by expectations the USDA will
forecast that U.S. farmers will reduce their corn sowings this
year when the USDA makes its important plantings forecasts on
March 31,” said Frank Rijkers, agrifood economist at ABN AMRO
Bank. “Reduced plantings in the U.S. could reduce world corn
supplies.”
(Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg and Naveen
Thukral in Singapore; editing by Janet Lawrence, David Gregorio
and Diane Craft)