The soybean exchange traded fund is turning around and futures prices are rallying the most in five weeks as traders looked to Chinese import data with the government shutdown hindering new U.S. numbers.
The Teucrium Soybean Fund (NYSEArca: SOYB) was up 0.8% Thursday. SOYB is still down 3.8% year-to-date.
China purchased 20 cargoes of U.S. corn in October, paying $2.40 a bushel cheaper than domestic prices, Bloomberg reports.
U.S. soybeans were $1.25 cheaper than Brazilian supplies, which helped boost Chinese demand.
Prices “are rising on speculation that China bought more than 3 million tons of soybeans and up to 2.5 million tons of U.S. corn the past three weeks,” Roy Huckabay, an executive vice president at Linn Group, said in the article. “The trade is expecting those sales to be announced shortly, now that the government is back to work.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that China’s soybean imports could increase 16% to a record 69 million metric tons year-over-year as of Oct. 1.