Wheat on the Defensive

Wheat on the Defensive

I'm KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report for February 3, 2012.

March wheat closed sharply lower on the session as the market corrected part of the steep gains from the past two sessions. Traders in the wheat markets booked profits on Thursday on ideas the recent rally was overdone. The weakness in European wheat futures and ideas that the cold weather in Europe will subside soon and not cause too much damage to the winter wheat crop helped to pressure the market.

From the CME floor, Frank Lesh of Future Path Trading shares his observations of Thursday’s market:

Lesh: “Wheat on the defensive here today. But not a surprise as wheat as really been a performer in here and up more than beans and corn have. A lot of short coverings in the wheat of course. We got a situation right now in the wheat markets where we had more speculator shorts than we did commercial shorts --which is somewhat unusual, certainly at this point in time.”

March corn was up a penny at 6-43. March Wheat ended Thursday down 11 and 1/2 cents at 6-62 and 3/4.

Portland prices for soft white wheat and club wheat was unchanged at mostly 6-95. Hard Red Winter Wheat with 11.5 pct protein was down 5 cents at mostly 7-87. DNS wheat with 14 pct protein was down a penny at mostly 9-81.

April live cattle were down 33 cents at 128-90. March feeder cattle were down 48 cents at 155-38. March class III milk was down 43 cents at 15-82.

I'm KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.