By Kirk Maltais


--Wheat for May delivery rose 5.9% to $6.18 1/4 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade Friday, breaking the $6/bushel mark for the first time since Feb. 2025 as traders ramped up short-covering.

--Soybeans for May delivery rose 1.9% to $12.01 3/4 a bushel.

--Corn for May delivery rose 1.6% to $4.60 3/4 a bushel.


HIGHLIGHTS


Embracing Risk: Investors carried a risk-on mentality in Friday trading, with money flowing to commodities in the midst of the Iran conflict. For wheat in particular, short-covering amped up as the grains complex rose ahead of the weekend. "It's all money flow today," Consus Ag Consulting's Karl Setzer said in a note. "Crude is spiking and taking anything associated with it, like ethanol and biodiesel, and these are supporting the ags." Setzer adds that fundamental news is limited, with little registering on the radar of grain traders.

Petroleum Push: Oil supply remains bottled-up at the Strait of Hormuz, which was the main factor giving commodity futures a boost. Grain prices tumbled, with gridlock at the Strait continuing to disrupt the flow of materials crossing it. "Speculative money continues to flood the commodities and grains despite any fundamentals, as the war with Iran intensifies and shows no signs of slowing," StoneX's Matt Zeller said in a note.


INSIGHT


Mitigating Circumstances: A crimp in fertilizer availability due to the Strait of Hormuz gridlock has some grain traders wondering if near record-size crops projected to be planted in the Corn Belt this spring might be too large. "The prevailing thought is that farmers will use less fertilizers, which will hurt yields and maybe switch from corn to another crop," said Brian Hoops of Midwest Market Solutions. Corn is a fertilizer-intensive crop, making it a more expensive for farmers to plant.

Raindrops Keep Falling: Analysts surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast that soybean production out of Brazil and Argentina will drop back from previous projections. Forecasting the USDA's next WASDE report, analysts said that Brazil's soybean output will slide 700,000 metric tons from the prior month to 179.3 million metric tons. In Argentina, soybean production is expected to decrease by 400,000 metric tons to 48.1 million metric tons. Decreasing totals means that competition from South America on the world export market may turn out to be slightly less than originally expected, thanks to excessive rainfall hitting growing areas in northern Brazil and Argentina.

Turning Down the Dial: Yields are likely to decline "once this war noise subsides," TCW's Jerry Cudzil said. February's surprisingly negative jobs report underscores a slowdown supportive of monetary easing, Cudzil said, but the conflict with Iran stokes the kind of inflation fears that leads to markets pricing in a more hawkish Fed. He bets the markets' pricing is misplaced and he is "slightly long duration" in his strategy. How interest rates fare will likely impact both consumer sentiment and farmer budgets.


AHEAD


--The USDA will release its weekly Grain Export Inspections report at 11 a.m. ET Monday.

--The USDA will release its monthly WASDE report at noon ET Tuesday.

--The EIA will release its Weekly Petroleum Status Update report at 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday.


Paulo Trevisani contributed to this article.

Write to Kirk Maltais at kirk.maltais@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

03-06-26 1543ET