Chicago agricultural commodities settle higher

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grains futures closed higher on Wednesday with soybean futures rising about 1 percent on Wednesday on bargain buying and short-covering, one day after a U.S. government forecast for record-large global soy inventories pushed the front contract to its lowest level in a year.

The most active corn contract for May delivery rose 2.5 cents, or 0.68 percent, to 3.69 dollars per bushel. May wheat delivery stayed unchanged at 4.3325 dollars per bushel. May soybeans went up 8.5 cents, or 0.90 percent, to 9.4775 dollars per bushel.

In the outside markets, the Brent crude oil market is 0.30 dollar per barrel lower, the U.S. dollar is higher, and the Dow Jones Industrials are 37 points lower.

Deanna Hawthorne-Lahre, StatFutures co-founder and grain trader, says that the main thing that the market is worrying about is the soybean weather in Argentina.

"Also, the investors are focused on the technicals that were rather compressed, with the recent break off the Feb/March highs. Plus, the soybean futures price spread between the July and November contracts broke from 60+ down to even money and then bounced off of that mark," Hawthorne-Lahre says.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in a monthly report on Tuesday raised its estimate of Brazil's soybean crop to 111 million tonnes, from 108 million last month. The USDA put the Argentine soy crop at 56 million tonnes, up from 55.5 million in March.

Reflecting the big harvests, the government raised its forecast of global soybean stocks at the end of the 2016-17 marketing year to 87.41 million tonnes, up from 82.82 million in March and above an average of trade estimates for 83.91 million. Endit