Chicago agricultural commodities mixed

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) corn, soybean settled a little lower on Wednesday, while wheat rebounded on short covering after it fell for fourth successive trading days.

The most active corn contract for March delivery lost 0.75 cents, or 0.21 percent, to settle at 3.6025 U.S. dollars per bushel. March wheat delivery added 3.75 cents, or 0.82 percent, to close at 4.6125 dollars per bushel. March soybeans fell 1 cents, or 0.12 percent, to close at 8.6225 dollars per bushel.

Analysts said that corn continued fall as an official report showed the corn-based ethanol stocks hit new highs, boosting expectations that less corn will be consumed for ethanol.

The U.S. weekly production of ethanol till week of Feb. 5 was 969,000 barrels per day, up 10,000 barrels from previous week, but the ending stocks reached 22,956,000 barrels, up 594,000 barrels from last week, according to a report released on Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Wednesday morning that private exporters reported export sales of 243,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to Japan during the 2016/2017 marketing year. However the export was viewed as just routine by analysts and couldn't give so much support to corn futures.

The Brazil's ongoing soybean harvest added pressure to U.S. soybeans, analysts said, adding that soybean was also burdened after USDA projected larger ending stocks. USDA said Tuesday in its monthly supply and demand report that the U.S. soybean ending stocks was raised up 10 million bushels to 450 million bushels due to lower crush. Endit