Wheat Market Trades Higher

Wheat Market Trades Higher

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Market Line Report for March 4, 2013. ?
Wheat markets traded mostly higher on the day Friday in the face of a sharply higher US Dollar, lower soybean market, and modest gains seen in the corn complex. Accelerating export demand in the Chicago wheat market plus a rather large short position held by funds underpinned the buying support. From the floor of the CME Group James Barnett shares his observations of Friday’s markets.
Barnett: “Wheat up a few cents today. It’s been a relentless decline in the wheat market over the past couple of months. We saw that extended earlier this week as we got some beneficial snow last week across parts of the hard-red winter wheat belt. It is still a drought out there overall. The drought monitors show severe drought throughout hard red winter wheat country. You see crop ratings really in the dumps, only about 20 percent in the good to excellent conditions in several states from South Dakota to all the way down to Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.”

Chicago May Wheat ended Friday up 6 cents at 7-20 and 1/2. May corn ended the day up a nickel at 7-08 and 1/2.??Portland prices for soft white wheat and club wheat were up 6 to 8 cents at mostly 8-70 and 1/4. Hard Red Winter Wheat with 11.5 pct protein prices were up 3 and 1/4 cents at mostly 8-78. DNS wheat with 14 pct protein prices were up 3 and 1/2 cents at mostly 9-43 and 1/4. ??April live cattle were up Friday a dime at 129-95. April Feeder cattle were down 77 and half cents at 144-15. April class III milk was down 6 cents at 17-13.