Soy commentary: Cash and futures prices soften ahead of WASDE

Soybean futures and cash prices softened slightly on Monday as the market started to estimate what to expect in this week’s USDA supply and demand estimates.

Beans for delivery in March traded in a fairly tight range of $9.70-9.78/bu after opening at $9.76/bu.

At time of press the contract was valued at $9.72/bu, down 6 cents on the day and poised for its fourth straight loss.

Initial talk was of Argentinian weather, but other sources said the bearish note was more to do with stockmarket falls and positioning before the USDA release of its monthly supply and demand estimates on Thursday.

US exports did pick up, however, both on inspections and on sales.

The USDA reported export sales of 198,600 mt to unknown destinations, with around two-thirds for the current marketing year and a third for the 2018/2019 marketing year.

Meanwhile, in weekly export inspections, 1.3 million mt was inspected for export versus analysts’ forecasts of up to 1.2 million mt.

In the cash markets, bids for paper at Paranagua looked stable despite the Brazilian real getting progressively weaker.

And bids for barges into the US Gulf were also steady.

With little other news, Agricensus kept its basis assessments for both US Gulf and Santos stable, with FOB USG assessed at 40 cents over March future for both February and March loading and FOB Santos marked at 65 cents over March futures for loading both this month and next.

China and European prices moved down in sympathy.