As of Jan. 11, trade sources suggest that commodity funds held a combined net long position of 22,188 futures and options contracts across CBOT corn, wheat, soybeans and soy products, anchored solely by optimistic corn bets. That compares with 42,688 contracts estimated a week earlier.
On Jan. 9, 2018, commodity funds held a huge net short of 416,695 contracts across the five commodities, which included heavily bearish positions in CBOT corn, soybeans and wheat. At present, speculators are only lightly bearish in both soybeans and CBOT wheat, and moderately to strongly bullish in corn.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which publishes the commitment of traders' data on a weekly basis, has been shuttered since the US government entered a partial shutdown on Dec. 22. The last official dataset published by the agency reflects speculators' positions in the week ended Dec. 18.
In the meantime, trade sources continue to provide their estimates of daily fund activity to Reuters as they have in the past.
Extrapolating the Dec. 18 data from CFTC with the daily fund estimates would suggest that commodity funds, including hedge funds and other money managers, held a net long position in CBOT corn futures and options through Jan. 11 of about 105,677 contracts.
This represents a slight reduction in the estimated position from a week earlier of 114,677 contracts. CFTC data showed money managers held a net long of 128,177 corn futures and options contracts through Dec. 18. The government shutdown also meant that the US Department of Agriculture was unable to issue the reports that had been expected on Friday, which may have been able to confirm the market's assumption of a tightening in US corn supply.
In the meantime, traders are watching the dry weather pattern in Brazil very closely as the soybean harvest begins, which will give way to the planting of the country's heavily exported second corn crop. Analysts predict that the upcoming corn harvest could be smaller than originally expected amid the current dry weather pattern, particularly if it continues.
SOYBEANS AND PRODUCTS Money managers sold soybeans in the week ended Jan. 11, extending their net short to an estimated 11,650 futures and options contracts from an estimated 4,650 a week earlier. This would still be far less bearish than funds had been from July through November, during which they averaged a net short of about 55,000 contracts.
This would also be drastically less pessimistic than a year ago. In the week ended Jan. 16, 2018, money managers' net short position in soybeans reached past 100,000 futures and options contracts for only the third week in history, though it dipped back below that mark in the following week. Industry estimates of soybean production for top exporter Brazil were on the decline last week as parts of the country grapple with dryness, but it was not enough to offset traders' concerns over the lack of new US deals with top buyer China.