Wheat, corn prices ease as dollar strengthens
Chicago wheat futures eased slightly on Thursday with a stronger dollar helping to keep a lid on prices despite lower-than-expected U.S. crop ratings.
Sluggish demand and expectations that a strong Northern Hemisphere harvest will keep the market well supplied also weighed on the market.
The rise in the dollar was triggered by a U.S. federal court blocking President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs from going into effect.
A stronger dollar makes U.S. farm exports costlier for buyers with other currencies.
The most active wheat contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was down 0.2% at $5.29-1/4 a bushel at 1032 GMT.
The USDA on Tuesday rated only 45% of U.S. spring wheat in good to excellent condition, far below expectations, and showed a decline in the condition of U.S. winter wheat.
A coming flip to better weather should help the young wheat crop but the low rating sets the scene for market scares if unfavourable weather patterns set in, wrote Reuters columnist Karen Braun.
Elsewhere, crop news has been better. The European Commission on Wednesday slightly raised its forecast for usable production of common wheat in the EU in 2025/26.
A strong wheat harvest in India is rapidly replenishing stocks, meaning the country won't need to import.
While wheat stocks should rise in India, they won't in the rest of the world, analysts at Rabobank said, predicting CBOT prices would rise towards $6 a bushel over the course of 2025.
"A big question mark is whether India could allow some exports," Rabobank said. "If India opens the export gates or Russian output ends up being bigger than expected following mild spring weather, we could see prices capped."
CBOT corn prices were also lower, slipping 0.8% to $4.47-1/2 a bushel, while soybeans rose 0.2% to $10.50-1/2 a bushel.
Jordan's state grains buyer has issued an international tender to purchase up to 120,000 metric tons of animal feed barley, European traders said on Thursday.
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Khaleej Times
38 minutes ago
- Khaleej Times
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Khaleej Times
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Zawya
an hour ago
- Zawya
Global economy's 'sugar rush' defies trade drama
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"While the worst shocks may be over, there's still a lot up in the air," Xingchen Yu, a strategist at UBS's Chief Investment Office, said. "We don't really know what a new normal for tariffs would look like, unfortunately." PAYBACK But so far the global economy has held up pretty well. China's output and exports are resilient as its companies re-route trade to the United States via third countries. Even in Europe, manufacturing activity was at a 33-month high in May, rebounding from a slump induced by more expensive fuel following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Confidence was also buttressed by the prospect of greater fiscal spending in Germany, a missing ingredient for European growth for the past couple of decades. The robustness of the world economy has surprised even professional forecasters. A measure produced by U.S. bank Citi that tracks the degree to which global economic data has surprised to the upside is now at its highest in more than a year. Some of that strength circles back to the tariffs themselves and the attempts by U.S. households and businesses to front-load purchases to beat anticipated price increases later this year. U.S. imports were up around 30% in March from where they were in October. The risk to the upbeat outlook comes from the expected "payback" of those advance purchases, which are unlikely to be repeated and will mean slower activity - in the U.S. and elsewhere - later. Economists still fear a triple whammy in which the front-loaded boost to the goods sector is unwound while U.S. household purchasing power is squeezed by higher prices and companies put off investment and hiring. At the margin, however, this scenario is starting to appear a little less likely after Trump's pause on tariffs. "The balance has slightly shifted towards more optimism, albeit with uncertainty and volatility," ING's global head of macro Carsten Brzeski said. ($1 = 143.6800 yen) (Additional reporting by Dan Burns in Washington, Claire Fu in Singapore, Ellen Zhang in Beijing and Leika Kihara in Tokyo; Editing by Mark John and Jane Merriman)
