Investors cut Euronext wheat longs and shorts, despite tender buying

Investors reduced both long and short positions on the key French milling wheat futures contract in the week to February 17, commitment of traders data from the contract’s operator Euronext showed Wednesday.

Alongside the reductions in wheat exposure, investors also reduced long and short positions for corn as well as slashing rapeseed shorts and adding a relatively small number of long positions.

Overall, the moves reflected uncertain outlooks, limited risk appetite and softer prices as demand remained largely absent amid big harvests – although the week was pockmarked with tender-based buying activity from North Africa and Asia, including buying from staple French customer Algeria.

For wheat, investors closed out 16,335 long contracts over the week to reduce the total positions to 180,906 – although the impact on the net position was balanced out by a similar sized fall on short positions, which shed 20,273 lots over the week.

That reduced total shorts to 191,060, reducing the net short by 3,939 to 10,154.

Corn saw similar moves, with longs losing 1,584 lots over the week and shorts declining 3,750 lots, taking total longs to 6,287 and total shorts to 8,474.

While that meant the contract was still in a net short stance, of 2,187, the figure had been virtually halved on the previous week’s 4,352 net short.

Finally, longs added 243 new contracts on rapeseed to accentuate a 1,591 lot reduction on shorts.

That took total longs to 30,114 and total shorts to 59,440, delivering a net short of 29,326.

It marks the sixth consecutive week that all three contracts have been in a net short position.