By Luzi Ann Javier Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Soybeans and corn rose for a second day in Chicago on speculation investors are ending bets on lower prices before today’s supply-and-demand forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Soybeans for March delivery added 0.9 percent to $9.38 a bushel in electronic trading on the Chicago Board of Trade at 11:54 a.m. Paris time, paring a gain of as much as 1 percent. Before this week, the oilseed had slid 13 percent this year. The USDA is scheduled to give its latest outlook in Washington. Hedge funds and other large speculators held short positions, or bets prices will fall, in 76,529 soybean futures and options contracts as of Feb. 2, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. That’s the most since October 2006. Short positions in corn rose to 146,376 contracts, the highest level since September. “We’re just seeing short-covering before the USDA releases its forecast,” Tetsu Emori, a commodity fund manager at Astmax Co., said by phone from Tokyo today. “The grain market is oversold, so there’s no more room for prices to go down.” Corn for March delivery was up 0.7 percent at $3.585 a bushel after adding as much as 0.8 percent earlier. The grain gained 1.3 percent yesterday after previously sliding 15 percent this year through Feb. 5. Milling Wheat Prices climbed “on short-covering in an oversold market,” Paris-based farm adviser Agritel said in a market comment. Wheat for March delivery was little changed at $4.8425 a bushel, paring a gain of as much as 0.5 percent. Milling wheat for delivery in March traded on Liffe in Paris slipped 0.4 percent to 125.50 euros ($172.10) a metric ton. “There’s very good supply and not so strong demand,” Astmax’s Emori said. “It’s a little bit difficult to sustain the price at a higher level.” Russia’s total grain exports may rise 17 percent to 1.6 million tons this month from a year earlier, grain hauler ZAO Rusagrotrans said yesterday. Russia, the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, is forecast to ship 18 million tons this year, according to the USDA. Outbound shipments of wheat, corn and barley from the country jumped 52 percent to 1.54 million tons in January, Moscow-based Rusagrotrans said. World wheat production in the year ending in June will be 675.5 million tons, up from a previous estimate of 674 million tons, researcher F.O. Licht said yesterday. The volume of wheat for export inspected at U.S. ports fell 5.5 percent to 16.9 million bushels in the week ended Feb. 4 from a week earlier, according to the USDA. Corn fell 31 percent to 27.1 million bushels and soybeans declined 9 percent to 39.6 million bushels, the agency said. To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net.

Source