By Kirk Maltais


-- Wheat for March delivery rose 2% to $5.72 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Tuesday, with traders taking advantage of fund traders' sizable short position by rallying.

-- Soybeans for January delivery rose 1.3% to $13.46 1/2 a bushel.

-- Corn for March delivery fell 0.4% to $4.73 1/2 a bushel.


HIGHLIGHTS


Late Boost: Fund traders are net short by over 100,000 contracts in wheat, according to the CFTC's latest Commitments of Traders Report, which traders took advantage of late in Tuesday's session by sparking a short-covering rally.

"Wheat traded both sides of unchanged before rallying smartly late in the session on short covering and talk of hard wheat business, and a near record combined large spec short in the three wheat contracts," said Charlie Sernatinger of Marex in a note.


Pressure Points: Uncertainty surrounding how Brazilian weather will pan out for crops being planted is the chief fundamental that drove funds to stick with an established pattern of going long on soybeans and shorting corn, continuing what was reported in the CFTC report and keeping corn down while soybeans climbed.

Fund traders are in control of price movement, with farmers generally staying out of the market, said Daniel Flynn of Price Futures Group.


INSIGHT


Backing Down: The 2024 Russian wheat crop is expected to be smaller than the huge one seen in 2023, but will still be quite large, SovEcon said in a note. The firm forecasts the 2024 wheat crop at 89.8 million metric tons, down from 91.5 million tons in 2023. Slightly lower yields are behind the drop, driven by declining average crop conditions.

"An additional negative yield factor is the expected decrease in agriculture inputs application as farmers will be cutting costs substantially amid declining margins," Andrey Sizov of SovEcon said in the note.


On the Mend: The USDA's final weekly crop progress report for the year showed that 50% of the winter wheat crop is in good or excellent condition as of the week ended Nov. 26, which is up two points from the previous week. It's also well up from 34% at this time last year.

This improved condition pressured wheat prices early in the session, said AgriTel in a note.

The report also said that the corn and soybean harvest in the U.S. is essentially complete.


Stuck on the Inside: Ukrainian farmland is producing more crops than last year, but what is grown isn't reaching the world export market. According to data from the country's Agricultural Ministry, production is up 40% from last year, to 55.5 million tons through the end of last week.

Driving this is a larger corn crop, which is up 84% from last year.

However, grain exports out of Ukraine are down by roughly 30%.

"This more than offsets the price-depressing effect of the higher overall Ukrainian supply," says Commerzbank in a note. "In view of the continuing Russian attacks on key export infrastructure in Ukraine, grain exports are also unlikely to recover significantly in the short term." This is expected to support global prices, the firm said.


AHEAD


-- The EIA is scheduled to release its weekly ethanol production and stocks report at 10:30 a.m. EST Wednesday.

-- The Federal Reserve is due to release the Beige Book at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday.

-- The USDA is scheduled to release its weekly export sales report at 8:30 a.m. EST Thursday.

-- The USDA is due to release its monthly agricultural prices report at 3 p.m. EST Thursday.


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


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-28-23 1520ET