Chicago wheat higher on technical buying; corn, soybean little changed

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural commodities closed mixed Wednesday, with wheat prices bouncing back strongly on technical buying and weaker U.S. dollar, while soybean and corn futures little changed.

The most active wheat contract for March delivery rallied 8.25 cents, or 1.71 percent, to 4.8975 U.S. dollars per bushel. Corn for March delivery added 0.25 cents, or 0.07 percent, to 3.7375 dollars per bushel. January soybeans delivery was unchanged, to 8.7675 dollars per bushel.

Chicago wheat rallied strongly on Wednesday, snapping its two-day losing streak, amid funds' near record short position and a sharply drop in the U.S dollar, even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) raised its outlook for world wheat stocks for 2015/16 crop year by 2.6 million tons from November projection in the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates(WASDE) report for December released on Wednesday.

The same report showed the USDA had raised its outlook for corn used to produce ethanol for 2015/16 crop year by 25 million bushel, lower than market expected. U.S. corn stocks are projected to end 25 million bushels higher than last month, the third consecutive increase in inventories by the USDA, according to analysts. The report once pushed corn futures lower.

Corn prices, however, got more support from the weekly ethanol production report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration at noon Wednesday, showing a big rise in production and a moderate drop in inventory which was seen as bullish to corn futures.

U.S. ethanol production through the week ending December 4 was up nearly 4percent from the prior week, to 993,000 barrels per day.

Soybeans were little changed for the day as the WASDE report said soybean supply and use projections for 2015/16 are unchanged from last month, and U.S. soybean stocks are also unchanged at 465 million bushels which, if realized, would be the highest since 2006/07 crop year. Enditem