Wheat exchange traded fund is growing, with wheat futures seeing their largest gain in over 20 months, on fears that Ukrainian grain exports will slow due as the Crimea crisis escalates.
The Teucrium Wheat Fund (NYSEArca: WEAT) jumped 3.6% Monday on almost 10 times the average volume.
CBOT wheat futures surged over 6.8% Monday, trading as high as $6.4 a bushel earlier in the session.
Under normal circumstances, Ukraine was projected to export 9.5 million metric tons of wheat this season, compared to 7.1 million tons last year, making the country the sixth-largest global exporter of wheat, Bloomberg reports.
However, as the Ukraine and Russia standoff worsens, traders are anticipating a shortfall in grain exports out of Ukraine.
Unrest in the Ukraine “is working to lift prices,” Sterling Smith, a futures specialist at Citigroup Inc. said in the article. “This is going to create extra risk premium in the market. Up and down volatility is going to be unusually high, especially for a time of year when things are normally very sedate.”
Traders are also speculating that trade sanctions against Russia, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of wheat, in response to the country’s incursion onto the Crimea peninsula will also slow Russian wheat shipments, reports Tony C. Dreibus for the Wall Street Journal.