Soybeans Head for Best Weekly Run in Four Years on Export Sales

June 7th, 2013

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Category: Oilseeds

Soybeans take a hit(Bloomberg) – Soybeans gained, set for a sixth weekly advance, the longest such rally in four years, as increased demand from importers drained supply from last year’s crop. Corn and wheat declined.

Soybeans for delivery in July, before this year’s harvest, rose 0.3 percent to $15.325 a bushel by 10:11 a.m. in Singapore, taking the weekly advance to 1.5 percent. Futures haven’t seen six straight weekly gains since June 2009.

Exporters in the U.S., set to regain its ranking as the top grower and shipper, already sold 36.62 million metric tons of the 36.74 million tons the government predicted will be shipped by Aug. 31, the Department of Agriculture said. Cumulative sales through May 30 are up 260,600 tons from a year earlier, before the country was hit by the worst drought since the 1930s.

“Supply of old-crop soybeans is quite tight,” Tetsu Emori, a commodity fund manager at Astmax Asset Management Inc. said from Tokyo today. “People are waiting for much higher prices. There’s no reason to sell for now.”

Inventories of soybeans in the U.S. will plunge 26 percent to 125 million bushels (3.39 million tons) before this year’s harvest, the smallest in nine years, the USDA said May 10. The Washington-based agency may pare that estimate to 124 million bushels when it updates its outlook on June 12, according to the average estimate of as many as 30 analysts and trading firms surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Corn for December delivery fell 0.1 percent to $5.475 a bushel in Chicago, set for a 3.4 percent loss this week. Wheat for July delivery slid 0.2 percent to $6.965 a bushel for a 1.3 percent loss this week.

Importers including South Korea and Mexico canceledpurchases of U.S. wheat, resulting in a net reduction in exportsales of about 33,200 tons in the week ended May 30, the USDA said yesterday. That cut the total sales for delivery in the year ended May 31 to 27.098 million tons, it said.

The cancellations were reported by exporters after the USDA said an unauthorized, genetically modified strain was found in Oregon.

To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net

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