Farm Bets
A measure of net-long positions across 11 agricultural products climbed 5.9 percent to 321,537 futures and options, as soybean and cotton holdings gained. The S&P’s Agriculture Index of eight commodities dropped 6.3 percent last week, the biggest slide since September 2011.
Bullish corn positions fell 9.3 percent to 82,517 contracts, a three-week low, the CFTC data show. Prices lost 4.6 percent last week. U.S. production will jump 30 percent this year and more than double inventories before the harvest in 2014, government data showed June 12. Soybeans dropped 2.4 percent last week and July wheat futures declined 2.2 percent.
“There is a glut of supply,” said Stanley Crouch, who helps oversee $2 billion as chief investment officer at New York-based Aegis Capital Corp. “There’s still pretty slack demand. We’re going to have to grow our way into more demand. You’re not going to see the shortages that were feared.”