Wheat Futures Posted Double-digit Loss

Wheat Futures Posted Double-digit Loss

I'm KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report for April 16, 2012.?

The steep rally in the US dollar and more talk of improving crop conditions ahead helped to encourage more selling and the weakness in the other grains added to the negative tone on Friday.

From the floor of the CME, James Barnett commodity analyst with A Contrarian's Dilemma shares his observations of Friday’s markets.

Barnett: “Pressure here from a couple of factors, perhaps the most major one is simply the weather. We’ve turned to the growing season now in the U.S. A pretty benign weather pattern. We may have lost a few bushels of wheat from the frost this week in the lower mid-west. But bottom line as a whole the crop it is thought to be getting bigger out in the hard red winter wheat belt -- in Kansas and into the plains the crop is looks pretty good.”

Chicago May Wheat ended Friday down 15 and 3/4 cents at 6-23 and 1/2. July new crop was down 14 and 1/4 cents at 6-30 and 1/4. May corn was down 8 and 1/4 cents at 6-29 and 1/4.

Portland prices for soft white wheat and club wheat was unchanged to down 20 cents at mostly 7 even. Hard Red Winter Wheat with 11.5 pct protein was down 10 cents at mostly 7-44. DNS wheat with 14 pct protein was down 13 cents at mostly 9-66.

June live cattle ended down $1.08 at 116-08. May Feeder cattle were down 73 cents at 151-53. May class III milk was up 29 cents at 14-97.

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