* Wheat was set for a fifth daily loss in six sessions
* Analysts expect USDA to report June 1 corn stocks up 16.5%
year on year
* Funds may have unwound corn longs too aggressively,
analysts said
(Updates throughout with market moves, adds byline and bullets,
updates headline, changes dateline from PARIS/BEIJING)
By P.J. Huffstutter
CHICAGO, June 26 (Reuters) - Chicago Board of Trade corn and
soybean futures eased on Friday, as forecasts of hot U.S.
weather raised concerns about corn crop conditions, and traders
watched for signs of renewed Chinese soy demand.
Trade was choppy in CBOT corn futures the day after a
technical reversal driven by a growing sense among traders that
funds may have been too aggressive in shedding long positions,
market analysts said.
However, a hot turn to Midwest weather starting this weekend
did bring some support for Chicago grains, which had previously
shown little reaction to a heatwave in Western Europe
threatening corn crops there.
The National Weather Service forecast that temperatures
could reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend as far north as
the upper Midwest and as far east as the Carolinas.
Hotter-than-normal weather is expected from the Plains to the
Atlantic Coast through July 4.
Part of the concern is the timing of a heatwave - and more
importantly, whether extreme heat will continue through July,
when corn crops in the Midwest typically go through pollination,
market analysts said.
CBOT wheat futures kept slumping on Friday, with the
most-active contract on track to end lower for the fifth
session in six, on supply pressures from Northern Hemisphere
harvests.
"Wheat just continues to be unimpressive," said Ted
Seifried, chief market strategist for Zaner Ag Hedge.
The most-active soybean contract on the Chicago Board
of Trade was down 0.09% at $11.56 a bushel at 12:18 p.m. CDT
(1718 GMT).
Crude oil prices fell by about 3% on Friday, on course for
steep weekly losses as supply concerns eased with more oil
tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The decline in energy prices weighed on soybeans and corn,
both of which are used as feedstocks for biofuels. CBOT corn
slipped 0.06% to $4.42-3/4 per bushel. CBOT wheat
fell 2.08% to $5.89 per bushel.
Traders also spent some of the day getting positions ready
for the U.S. Department of Agriculture acreage and stocks
reports on June 30, among the most widely followed data in grain
markets.
Still, traders seemed to show less interest in making big
position moves going into the weekend, in part from a lack of
relevant news, said Karl Setzer, partner at advisory firm Consus
Ag Consulting. "Next Tuesday's acreage and stocks reports will
give the market fresh data to sift through, even if numbers are
little changed from estimates," he said.
USDA is expected to report June 1 wheat stocks were up 9.2%
from a year earlier, a Reuters poll of analysts showed.
USDA is also expected to report that June 1 corn stocks were
up 16.5% from a year earlier and that farmers planted about 95
million acres of corn this spring, Reuters polls showed. The
agency is expected to report that U.S. soybean stocks on June 1
were up about 3.8% from a year earlier and that farmers planted
about 85.4 million acres of soybeans this spring, analysts said.