(Businessweek) – Corn fell for a second day after the U.S. forecast record global production and increase in domestic inventories from a year earlier as output gains.
The contract for March delivery lost 0.3 percent to $4.3475 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade at 11:05 a.m. in Singapore. Prices climbed to $4.4075 yesterday, the highest since Nov. 14, before closing 0.5 percent lower at $4.36.
World output in the year that began Oct. 1 will be 964.28 million metric tons, compared with 962.83 million forecast a month earlier and up from 862.88 million a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said yesterday. The U.S. surplus on Aug. 31, the end of the marketing year, will be 1.792 billion bushels, down from 1.887 billion forecast in November and compared with 824 million a year earlier, the agency said.
“Despite the modest downward revision this month, U.S. corn stocks remain forecast 118 percent higher” than a year earlier, Luke Mathews, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia wrote in a note. “World feed grain supplies and ending stocks have been raised to comfortable levels.”
World wheat inventories before the start of the Northern Hemisphere harvests in 2014 will be 182.78 million tons as Canadian and Australian growers collect bigger crops, compared with 178.48 million predicted in November, the USDA said. Global soybean production will reach a record 284.94 million tons, compared with 283.54 million forecast last month and up from 268.02 million a year earlier, it said.
Wheat for March delivery advanced as much as 0.3 percent to $6.4075 a bushel and was at $6.4025. Prices dropped to $6.35 yesterday, the lowest since June 2012. Soybeans for delivery in January were little changed at $13.3725 a bushel.
