Grain and livestock futures end mostly lower Tuesday with a poor performance to end April.
Soybeans saw the biggest losses on fund selling and Kent Beadle with Paradigm Futures says it was driven by heavy deliveries against the May soybean oil of 2,101 contracts and May soybeans at 533.
He says, “That’s a large number and it was definitely construed bearishly by traders. It was maybe more of a surprise we had that large of deliveries in soybeans with the fairly large carry we see. It didn’t make sense to deliver rather than just roll into a deferred contract.”
Grains also saw end of month profit taking, with wheat the most susceptible due to the recent run up in prices. Chicago wheat also had heavy deliveries against the May of 1,151 contracts.
The fast-planting pace also weighed on grains.
Beadle says, “Monday afternoon we had much faster planting progress than some people in the trade were looking for. Corn planting was 5% ahead of the five-year average, soybeans were 8% faster and spring wheat planting progress beat the average by 15%. In the Western Corn Belt particularly farmers were very active until about last Friday when the rains started to come. However, they saw the forecasted rains and worked hard to try to beat the weather system,”
Plus, outside markets were risk off with the stock market lower and the dollar higher which weighed on the grains but also the livestock futures.
Beadle says the heavy fund liquidation for a second day in cattle was also a result of end of the month positioning.
There was also risk aversion tied to USDA announcing it will be testing ground beef in the states impacted by H5N1 and another case detected in a herd in Colorado.
