Market News

Down day for grains, oilseeds

 

Soybeans were lower on fund and technical selling. The trucker strike in Brazil is ongoing but some roads have been cleared and the action may be close to an end, so their supplies may start getting to port again shortly. Past that – South American weather look good in most major growing areas. Soybean meal was lower and bean oil was higher on the adjustment of product spreads.

Corn was lower on fund and technical selling. Corn was also watching that South American weather, which looks conducive for development and early harvest. Aside from that, traders are keeping an eye on U.S. acreage projections. Ethanol futures were lower. Ethanol production for the week ending February 20 averaged 947,000 barrels per day, down 1.8% on the week, but up 4.6% on the year.

The wheat complex was lower on fund and technical selling. USDA says that Egypt officially bought 120,000 tons of U.S. hard red winter wheat Wednesday, with more announced purchases expected. Egypt does have an outstanding grant from the U.S. government to buy wheat and some news outlets reported sales of 290,000 tons of HRW. Still, demand for U.S. wheat remains slow and the world supply is very large.