Speculators Move In On Wheat In Race For Q1 Gains

From a year-to-date loss of 13% two weeks back, Soft Red Winter wheat, the most liquid U.S. wheat futures traded in Chicago, cut that deficit to just about 6% at Monday’s settlement. SRW wheat has the highest value among the different variants of the grain grown in the U.S., and is integral for producing the flour that makes breads, pasta and crackers, as well as starches and adhesives.

Still, wheat is the only major U.S. grains market remaining in the red as the end of the first quarter approaches. Rivals corn and soybeans are both up 1.3% each.

Within the wheat sub-complex, SRW is doing better than Minneapolis-traded Hard Red Spring wheat, which is the United States’ most abundant crop. HRS wheat, covering Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle and used primarily for bread-making, is down 10% year-to-date.

But while SRW and HRS wheat are both down, another bread-making variant of the grain, Kansas City-traded Hard Red Winter wheat, is up 3% on the year. The rally in HRW wheat has raised the probability that the Chicago- and Minneapolis-traded futures of the grain could also turn positive in the not-too-distant future.

Technical analysts on Investing.com are betting on that, rating Chicago-traded wheat a “Strong Buy” in their daily outlook.

At Monday’s settlement, Chicago-traded wheat’s front-month May contract settled at $4.73 per bushel.

The highest analyst-pegged resistance for the contract is $4.81—leaving it room to move another 2% up. But a recommendation for a “Sell” only emerges strongly at the $5 level, when the market, now trading above the 20-Day Moving Average, enters the 100-Day Moving Average. That would be a 6% gain from current levels—just enough to push it into positive territory.

Fundamentally, the driver behind the gains in SRW wheat that have helped it cut losses in the past two weeks were difficult planting conditions in a very wet U.S. Great Plains and Midwest.

While the prospect of a bullish market in wheat was enticing, some like Mike Seery, a technical chartist and commodities picker in Plainfield, Illinois, were still practicing a little caution.

Get The News You Want

Read market moving news with a personalized feed of stocks you care about.

Get The App

Said Seery:

“I think if the weather problems persist, you could see further prices to the upside especially based just on short covering alone. But I am currently advising clients to sit on the sidelines and wait for better chart structure to develop.”

He added:

“One surprising factor is the fact that large money-managed funds are short nearly 74,000 contracts and they are adding to their record short position in the Kansas City wheat market which now stands at 51,000 contracts. I'm very surprised especially with the rally that we witnessed over the last couple of weeks.”

But Seery also believed wheat is too cheap for its current fundamentals, saying:

“I do believe now that spring is upon us, the bottom in the grain markets may be at hand.”

Dan Hueber of the Hueber Report in St. Charles, Illinois, agrees:

“Daily indicators continue to point higher, so we should have potential to try and push higher over the next few days.”

However, Jack Scoville of The Price Futures Group in Chicago argued that weather, more than fund action, would be the driver for wheat hereon.

Said Scoville:

“The region will need a lot of good weather before planting can begin. Demand for spring wheat has been less lately due to the price spreads between spring here and competing wheat around the world. A rally in world wheat prices would help improve demand potential for U.S. and Canadian spring wheat.”

Written By: Investing.com