NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) -
Chicago soybean futures edged up on Wednesday, while wheat declined and corn was squeezed between them in what one strategist called a seasonal "bottoming formation" for the U.S. agriculture markets as traders awaited fresh data on harvest and supplies.
Most-active Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) soybean futures were up about 0.1% at $12.74-3/4 a bushel by 11:30 a.m. CDT (1630 GMT), after touching three-month lows in the prior session.
A decline in the U.S. dollar from recent highs along with a recent report of
Chinese soybean purchases
lent some support to soybean prices, but ample global supplies have capped gains following a steep selloff Friday.
Wheat futures declined about 1.3% at $5.60-1/2 a bushel but traded within the range of the prior two sessions. Corn inched down about 1/2 a cent to $4.87 a bushel, consolidating near a three-week high, but was still hovering near lows last seen in December 2020.
"Corn has been hovering in a tight range in a bottoming formation," said Scott Harms, a senior agricultural risk specialist with Archer Financial Services in Chicago, who added that he saw similar signals for wheat and soybeans. Wheat last week hit lows not seen since September 2020 before moving higher.
"It's more of a seasonal action as well as technical action that tells me we are running out of sellers," Harms said of U.S. agriculture futures, more broadly.
"Now it's a question of how aggressively can buyers come into the marketplace and show us where the upside is," he said.
Funds and speculative investors still hold large net short positions in wheat and corn, but Harms said he expects to see some short-covering in those contracts ahead of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data set to be released next week on supply and demand as well as production forecasts for the 2023 growing season.
"We have seen some exiting, and that's allowed the corn market to bounce a little bit, and the wheat market had a nice bounce going for it before last Friday's sell-off," he said. (Reporting by Zachary Goelman in New York; Additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris and Peter Hobson in Canberra; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
