Chicago | Reuters – Chicago Board of Trade soybean futures ended lower on Tuesday after jumping earlier to a one-week high as top importer China bought more U.S. supplies.
Corn and wheat futures also finished weaker, with agricultural markets pulling back from gains during the previous session.
Soybean futures turned down after the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that exporters sold 336,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans to China for 2025/2026 delivery. Talk in the market about bigger sales had pushed up prices on Monday.
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China’s state stockpiler Sinograin this week bought 10 U.S. soybean cargoes, totalling around 600,000 metric tons, three traders told Reuters.
Overall, China has bought about 10 million tons of U.S. soybeans since the nations in late October reached a truce in their trade war, the traders said. That represented over 80 per cent of the 12 million metric tons that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent previously said China pledged to buy by the end of February.
Some traders had feared that Beijing might pause its buying after the U.S. captured the president of Venezuela, a Chinese strategic partner, said Jim Gerlach, president of A/C Trading in Indiana.
“The fact that they bought beans despite this going on is supportive,” Gerlach said.
Most-active CBOT soybean futures Sv1 closed down 5-3/4 cents at $10.56-1/4 a bushel after rising earlier to the highest level since December 29.
CBOT corn Cv1 ended 1/2 cent weaker at $4.44 per bushel and also hit its highest point since December 29 in earlier activity. In CBOT wheat, futures Wv1 slipped 2 cents to finish at $5.10-1/2 per bushel.
Concerns about the risk of dry weather hurting corn crops in Argentina helped underpin prices, Gerlach said. Analysts also kept an eye on dryness in U.S. winter wheat belts.
“Pockets of dryness in the U.S. Plains lent support to wheat,” said Josh Lawrence, advisory consultant at IKON Commodities. “Still, gains were limited by ample supplies from major exporting countries.”
Grain traders were also watching investor flows linked to annual changes in the composition of commodity indexes, and looking ahead to the crop data due from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on January 12.
-Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago; Ella Cao, Daphne Zhang and Lewis Jackson in Beijing and Gus Trompiz in Paris.
