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Corn faces 5th week of losses as U.S. weather improves, soy falls

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  • Corn extends decline on forecasts of cooler U.S. weather
  • Soybeans give up Thursday’s gains, wheat little changed

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By Naveen Thukral

SINGAPORE, July 22 (Reuters) – Chicago corn futures were on track for a fifth consecutive week of decline on Friday as an outlook for cooler temperature across the U.S. grain belt boosted expectations of a bumper crop.

Soybeans slid, giving up overnight gains, while wheat was steady after ending up on Thursday with prices underpinned by concerns over wet weather hurting crops in Europe.

Chicago Board of Trade most-active corn contract Cv1 has lost 5.2 percent this week. Soybeans Sv1have also given up about 5 percent after finishing last week largely unchanged.

Wheat Wv1, however, is down more than 1 percent in its second week of decline.

“For corn, (adverse) weather concerns for the U.S. crop have failed to materialise. A lot of speculative length has been unwound,” said Brett Cooper, senior manager for markets at FCStone Australia.

“One supporting factor in the wheat market has been the impact of very wet couple of months in Europe, lowering quality and yields.”

The latest U.S. weather view calls for high temperatures currently hovering over the corn belt to quickly moderate, with some beneficial rains also in the mix for the weekend.

There is additional pressure on corn stemming from U.S. data showing a drop in demand.

A weekly U.S. Department of Agriculture report said that old-crop corn export sales came in at 345,100 tonnes in the seven days ended July 14, down from 667,777 tonnes a week ago.

New new-crop sales were 506,300 tonnes, down from 687,843 tonnes. The old-crop figure was below market forecasts while the new-crop number was in line with expectations.

New-crop soybean export sales totalled a bigger-than-expected 1.002 million tonnes, sharply up from 547,046 tonnes a week earlier. Old-crop soybean sales were 325,000 tonnes.

In more bearish news, Argentina raised its view for the country’s 2015-16 soybean and corn crops on robust yields.

The Agriculture Ministry said it now expects 39.8 million tonnes from the 2015-16 corn crop, up from 37.9 million in its last monthly report, and it forecast 58.8 million tonnes of soybeans, compared with 58 million before.

Commodity funds were net sellers of CBOT corn futures contracts on Thursday. They were net buyers of wheat contracts and even in soybeans.