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Open interest in the US corn futures market was slashed 14% in the week to August 29, as the marketing year wrapped up and producers and merchants closed out long and short positions, while managed money investors add to soybean longs and closed short positions, according to data.
The weekly commitment of traders update from the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC), released late Friday, September 1, showed the corn net short had been reduced while the soybean net long was enhanced to reach a four-week high.
Wheat futures reported broadly showed investors building short positions at the expense of longs as investors eyed significant stock and production levels across the Black Sea.
Starting with corn, total open interest fell 14% from 1.8 million contracts to 1.58 million over the week, with producers reducing their long positions by around 10% and their short positions by around 5%.
That move was accelerated by a broader exodus from spreading positions across all entities.
Overall, managed money investors added 10,662 new long positions and closed out 8,125 short positions over the week to reduce the net short by 18,787 as it reached 87,348.
That reflected total longs of 166,472 lots and total shorts of 253,820 lots and came as investors absorbed field reports from crop tours monitoring key producing regions.
Alongside that, the trade will have to balance expectations of further dry conditions ahead along with low water levels along the key Mississippi artery to the US Gulf.
For soybeans, the same dynamic saw investors adding to long positions and cutting shorts to bolster the prevailing net long stance.
Total longs jumped 21,476 lots to 118,861 while shorts declined by 11,303 to 27,876 lots.
That increased the net long by 32,779 to 90,985 to set a four-week high.
Across wheat, Kansas hard red winter contracts pulled in a slightly different direction to Chicago and Minneapolis, but the overall impact was largely negated.
Chicago soft red winter reported a 729 lot reduction in longs and a substantial 8,231 lot increase for shorts that took total longs down to 59,987 contracts while lifting total shorts to 139,868 – a ten-week high.
Overall, that strengthened the net short as it increased 8,960 to 79,881, also a ten-week high.
Minneapolis hard red spring contracts followed the same path, as investors pulled out of 602 long contracts and added 1,920 new short positions to reduce total longs to 4,175 lots and raise shorts to 12,931 lots.
That added 2,522 to the net short, which sank to 8,756.
Kansas was largely stable as investors added 523 new long contracts alongside adding 190 new short contracts – a move that blunted some of the impact on the net position.
Total longs climbed to 38,486 contracts and shorts to 44,118, reducing the net short by just 333 to 5,632.