Managed money rebuilds corn net long, as soybean, wheat decline: CFTC

Corn was the only one of the three main grains and oilseeds futures contracts to see managed money increase its long position, data for the week ending April 3 from the CFTC revealed late Friday.

The data represented the calm ahead of the storm, reflecting a week in which South American weather worries continued to dominate ahead of a major escalation in US-China trade relations.

Net long positions increased by over 23,000 lots on combined futures and options, as a 13,000 lot increase on long contracts was augmented by a 10,000 lot reduction in short positions, with open interest increasing.

For soybean contracts, individual long positions and short positions saw only limited activity with both long and short positions increasing.

A near 3,000 lot increase on short positions was enough to overwhelm the more modest increase on longs to reduce the net long position by 2,424 contracts.

For soybeans, it was the fifth consecutive week in which open interest from managed money has increased, taking the total to 1,101,433 contracts.

In all cases, the CFTC’s data captures activity in the week running into China’s surprise announcement, on April 4, that it would impose a 25% tax on US imports, including soybeans, corn, durum wheat and sorghum.

Reaction to that, a step that saw soybeans shed over $0.50/bu on the day, and the retaliatory announcement from the US that expanded measures against China-made goods to $100 billion, will factor into next week’s data.

Wheat saw a modest reduction in the net long position for HRW, driven mostly by an increase in the number of short contracts, and a deepening of the net short position on SRW.

For SRW, both the long and short totals fell with 13,000 positions closed out of the long camp versus 11,762 lost on the short side, leaving the overall net short position at 73,418 contracts.