U.S. Wheat Futures Hit Six-Month Low, Soybean Slide on Better Weather Forecasts
Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures fell on Wednesday, touching a six-month low with traders saying that newly harvested supplies were able to meet the current global demand.
Soybean futures also were weaker, with the latest weather outlooks calling for better weather during key development periods for the U.S. crop.
"The forecasts this morning are pretty wet this week over the center of the belt, but turn dry for next week," Charlie Sernatinger, global head of grain futures at ED&F Man Capital said in a note to clients. "There is, however, a big change in the temperature outlook, with the models turning decidedly less hot for the second half of August, taking some stress off the table."
Weakness in crude oil added pressure to soy.
Corn futures ended higher after trading both sides of unchanged during the session.
The benchmark CBOT September soft red winter wheat contract settled down 11 cents at $7.63-3/4 a bushel. The most-active contract posted its fourth straight losing sessions, bottoming out at $7.52, its lowest on a continuous basis since Feb. 4.
Global wheat consumption is headed for its biggest annual decline in decades as record inflation forces consumers and companies to use less and replace the grain with cheaper alternatives.
CBOT November soybeans were down 16-3/4 cents at $13.69-3/4 a bushel and CBOT December corn was 2 cents higher at $5.96-1/4 a bushel.
The first grain vessel to leave a Ukrainian sea port since the start of the war was inspected in Turkey on Wednesday before its onward journey to Lebanon, but Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said this was only a fraction of what Kyiv needed to export.
"The price direction will depend on how much wheat and corn actually comes out of Ukraine in the coming weeks," one Singapore-based trader said.
(Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, David Goodman and David Gregorio)
