Chicago | Reuters – U.S. soybean futures rose on Friday, with bargain buying in focus after prices fell to their lowest since late July a day earlier, traders said.
Corn futures also ended firm after posting sharp declines on Thursday.
All three commodities traded in both positive and negative territory, with concerns about tightening world supplies providing support while worries about a weakening global economy cutting into demand limited the strength.
Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures for November delivery SX2 settled up 9 cents at $13.67 a bushel.
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The contract weakened early in the trading session but found support just above the 2-1/2 month low of $13.50 it hit on Thursday.
“The soybean market has become quite oversold and we could very well see some short covering going into the weekend,” Tomm Pfitzenmaier, analyst for Summit Commodity Brokerage, said in a research note.
A rally in the crude oil market added support to soybeans but uncertainty about purchases by China, the world’s largest buyer of soybeans, kept the gains in check.
China’s soybean imports are likely to drop to their lowest in more than two years this month, according to two traders and Ole Houe, director of advisory services at agriculture brokerage IKON Commodities in Sydney.
CBOT December corn futures CZ2 were up 7-3/4 cents at $6.83-1/4 a bushel and CBOT December soft red winter wheat WZ2gained 1-1/4 cents to $8.80-1/4 a bushel.
Wheat prices have been curbed since the summer by increasing volumes shipped from Ukraine through the Black Sea corridor.
A fifth vessel chartered by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has left Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Chornomorsk and will deliver 30,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat to Ethiopia, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said on Friday.
– Additional reporting by Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Gus Trompiz in Paris
