02/03/06 Fund buying drives up wheat futures

02/03/06 Fund buying drives up wheat futures

Marketline February 3, 2006 Wheat futures were strongly higher Thursday. Joe Vidora of F.C. Stone at the Chicago Board of trade says the grains benefitted from fund buying pure and simple. Vidora: "And that is all we really have to say here today. The markets all were positive, firm and it was all positive and firm off fund buying. You can label it index. You can label it what you want, but the funds are here to buy it." Items in the news stream that attracted attention was a report Kansas experienced the warmest January on record. Also some cold weather was forecast for the hard red winter wheat belt and that prompted crop damage worries. India may now import about 500-thousand tons of wheat. It now appears results of the Iraqi tender may become known over the weekend. On Thursday March Chicago wheat was up eight cents at 3-47 ¼. March corn up four at 2-20 ½. Portland cash white wheat a penny higher at mostly 3-46. August new crop 3-56 to 3-63. Club wheat 3-96. PNW HRW 11.5 percent protein higher at 4-68. Dark northern spring 14% protein higher at 5-28. Export barley 102 dollars a ton. USDA has announced Mexico has agreed to take bone-in U.S. beef from cattle under 30 months of age. Mexico had reopened to boneless U.S. beef from those cattle in March of 2004. Cattle futures were lower again Thursday on weak cash fundamentals and technical weakness. April live cattle down 53 cents at 90-40. March feeders down 57 at 108-70. March Class III milk down 14 cents at 12-01. I'm Bob Hoff and that's Marketline on the Northwest Ag Information Network. Now this.
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