(Reuters) – U.S. wheat rose for a sixth consecutive session on Monday to trade near its highest since early August with harsh weather threatening crops in the United States and the Black Sea region.
Soybeans rose 0.9 percent, recouping some of last session’s deep losses on end-user demand, while corn rose 0.4 percent in early Asian trade.
FUNDAMENTALS
* Chicago Board of Trade wheat climbed 8.9 percent last week, its biggest advance since July 2012. Wheat rose every day last week on frigid temperatures threatening U.S. crops and poor early growth in Russia and Ukraine.
* Gains in wheat futures come even as U.S. prices remain uncompetitive against Black Sea, European and Argentine origins. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported all-wheat export sales for the week ended Nov. 6 at only 417,700 tonnes, though up 57 percent from the previous week.
* U.S. soybeans fell 3 percent on Friday on pressure from weakness in the cash market following a week of good farmer selling and surprise deliveries that indicated supplies were more readily available than previously thought.
* The USDA reported net weekly soymeal export sales at 21,300 tonnes, a figure that included cancellations of 172,100 tonnes sold to unknown destinations.
* Large speculators raised their net long position in CBOT corn futures in the week to Nov. 11, 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 switched to net long position in soybeans.
* Informa Economics raised its projection for U.S. 2015 corn plantings to 88.331 million acres and trimmed its forecast for 2015 soybean plantings to 88.322 million, the private analytics firm said on Friday in a note to clients.
* The soybean figure would still be the highest on record, if realized.
MARKET NEWS
* Japanese stocks slipped on Monday and the yen stumbled to a fresh seven-year low against the dollar after data showed Japan’s GDP unexpectedly shrank in the third quarter, throwing the world’s third-biggest economy into recession.
