Chicago soybean futures slid for a third consecutive session on Monday to hit their lowest in more than nine months as higher U.S. stocks weighed on the market.
Wheat fell for the first time in four sessions, while corn lost ground.
“Soybean prices are easing a little bit as U.S. stocks surprised the market,” said Phin Ziebell, an agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank in Melbourne.
“But it will be interesting to see how high oil prices influence grains and oilseeds.”
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) lost 0.7% to $12.37-1/4 a bushel, as of 0450 GMT, after dropping earlier in the session to $12.35 a bushel, the lowest since late December.
Wheat gave up 0.7% to $7.50-1/4 a bushel and corn slid 0.6% to $5.38-1/4 a bushel.
Soybean futures fell on pressure from larger-than-expected stocks reported on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). There was additional pressure from the ongoing U.S. harvest.
The USDA reported Sept. 1 soybean stocks at 256 million bushels, above the entire range of trade estimates in a Reuters pre-report poll.
After Friday’s CBOT close, the USDA said U.S. processors crushed 168.2 million bushels of soybeans in August, below an average of trade estimates for 169.0 million.
The agency on Thursday reported U.S. Sept. 1 wheat stocks at a 14-year low and also cut its estimate of the 2021 U.S. wheat harvest more than most analysts had expected.
Large speculators raised their net-long position in CBOT corn futures in the week to Sept. 28, regulatory data released on Friday showed.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s weekly commitments of traders report also showed that noncommercial traders, a category that includes hedge funds, increased their net-short position in CBOT wheat and raised their net-long position in soybeans.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Naveen Thukral; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. and Subhranshu Sahu)