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U.S. corn, soy, wheat closer lower; end week in negative territory (RTRS)

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By Mark Weinraub

CHICAGO, Nov 11 (Reuters) – U.S. soybean futures fell 1 percent on Friday, weighed down by concerns about weakness in Chinese markets limiting export demand from the world’s top buyer of the oilseed, traders said.

Chicago Board of Trade corn and wheat futures also were lower. Weakness in corn stemmed from growing inventories amid a record U.S. harvest while weak export demand for U.S. wheat weighed on that grain.

A strong dollar, coupled with weakness in the Brazilian currency, added pressure to soybeans as the currency fluctuations were seen benefiting exports from the South American producer.

“The Brazilian réal fell some 5 percent this week on fears of U.S. protectionism, after Mr. Trump was elected President, and there was big farmer selling in Brazil yesterday,” Charlie Sernatinger, global head of grain futures at ED&F Man Capital said in a note to clients.

All three commodities posted weekly losses, with the bearish tone from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s monthly supply and demand and production reports hanging over the market.

CBOT January soybean futures SF7 were down 12 cents at $9.86 a bushel after rallying during the overnight trading session.

“We had a big reversal lower in the Chinese soybean market,” said Jim Gerlach, president of A/C trading. “Once that reversal locked in, we saw some weakness in the U.S. market.”

Additionally, the pace of U.S. soybean shipments also was lagging behind previous years, despite a USDA forecast for record exports, Gerlach said.

Some traders said that a Chinese investment fund was forced to liquidate its holdings, which helped spark the initial sell-off.

CBOT December corn CZ6 was 3-1/4 cents lower at $3.40-1/4 a bushel while CBOT December wheat WZ6 was down 1-3/4 cents at $4.03 a bushel.

For the week, soybeans were down 0.3 percent, corn was down 2.3 percent and wheat was down 2.7 percent. Those would mark the biggest weekly declines for both corn and wheat since late August.

Egypt’s state grain buyer GASC said it had bought 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat. Traders said GASC had purchased the wheat from Aston at $192.50 a tonne free-on-board (FOB) and $9.64 a tonne freight equating to $202.14 a tonne cost and freight.

There was no U.S. wheat offered in the Egyptian tender.