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BEIJING/PARIS - Chicago soybean futures fell on Thursday as a pledge by the United States and China to boost agricultural trade disappointed traders looking for details on potential purchases. Corn and wheat tracked the weakness in soybeans, with attention turning back onto ample global supply.
After Thursday's highly anticipated meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, China pledged to expand farm trade with the United States and Trump said Beijing would buy "tremendous" volumes of soybeans, but neither side gave specifics.
The prospect of large Chinese purchases, after months of stalled soybean trade due to the wider trade war between Washington and Beijing, had pushed Chicago prices to a 15-month high this week. Ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea, China's state-owned COFCO bought three U.S. soybean cargoes this week, the country's first purchases of this year's U.S. harvest, two trade sources told Reuters on Wednesday.
But hopes of further deals were cooled by initial readouts from the meeting. "There is nothing really there," said Andrew Whitelaw, an analyst at Australian consultant Episode 3. "The market was expecting a trade deal that was concrete and would resume the trade, but it's not really all that concrete as far as we can see at the moment."
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) fell 1.9% to $10.74-1/4 a bushel, as of 1009 GMT. "Markets are having a slight 'buy the rumor, sell the fact' reaction to today's Trump-Xi meeting," Peak Trading Research said in a note, adding cautious comments by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about an interest rate cut in December weighed on overall investor sentiment.
CBOT corn lost 1.2% to $4.28-3/4 a bushel, after hitting its highest in almost four months earlier in the session. CBOT wheat was down 1.9% at $5.22-1/4 a bushel after reaching a six-week peak.
Grain traders were continuing to grapple with a lack of official U.S. data during a government shutdown, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weekly export sales reports, normally published on Thursdays.
Analysts estimated weekly U.S. soybean export sales of 600,000-1.6 million metric tons, corn sales of 1.1-2.1 million metric tons and wheat sales of 350,000-600,000 metric tons, according to a Reuters poll. Prices at 1009 GMT Last Change Pct Move CBOT wheat 522.25 -10.00 -1.88 CBOT corn 428.75 -5.25 -1.21 CBOT soy 1074.25 -20.25 -1.85 Paris wheat 190.00 -2.00 -1.04 Paris maize 182.75 -2.00 -1.08 Paris rapeseed 483.75 0.00 0.00 WTI crude oil 60.08 -0.40 -0.66 Euro/dlr 1.16 0.00 0.16 Most active contracts - Wheat, corn and soy US cents/bushel, Paris futures in euros per metric ton.





















