BLBG:Wheat Falls, Poised for Worst Week Since September Before Stockpile Report
Wheat retreated for a third day and headed for a weekly decline before a U.S. report that may show an increase in global stockpiles. Soybeans and corn fell.
March-delivery wheat dropped as much as 0.8 percent to $5.92 per bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade before trading at $5.9575 at 2:09 p.m. in Singapore. Futures are poised to decline 4.8 percent this week.
Worldwide inventories before the Northern Hemisphere’s 2012 harvest may climb 3.4 percent to 202.89 million metric tons, more than the government estimated last month, according to a Bloomberg News survey. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will update its forecasts at 8:30 a.m. in Washington.
“It has been pretty lackluster trading in agricultural markets this whole week because there’s the USDA report tonight, so the market’s just treading water,” Victor Thianpiriya, an agricultural commodity analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said by phone from Melbourne today. “With everything else that’s going on in the macro environment, it’s very hard to position.”
China, the second-largest corn producer, started purchasing the grain from farmers to stockpile for state reserves, said two trading executives and a government official familiar with the matter. The government will buy corn at 1,960 yuan ($308) a ton in Heilongjiang province, 1,980 yuan a ton in Jilin and 2,000 yuan a ton in Liaoning, said the two executives, who declined to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media.
Export Data
Corn for delivery in March declined as much as 0.5 percent to $5.9725 a bushel before trading at $5.985.
In the week ended Dec. 1, sales of U.S. corn for delivery before Aug. 31 more than doubled from a week earlier to 695,497 tons, and soybean sales jumped 57 percent, the USDA said yesterday. China bought 72 percent of the oilseed and 34 percent of the grain, data show.
“U.S. export data was pretty supportive for corn and soybeans, but not really for anything else,” Thianpiriya said.
Soybeans for January delivery slid as much as 0.4 percent to $11.275 a bushel before trading at $11.285. The oilseed is heading for a 0.6 percent loss this week.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ranjeetha Pakiam in Kuala Lumpur at rpakiam@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net
