Grain Futures Prices Fall

Prices of grain and soybean futures fell in moderate trading Tuesday on the Chicago Board of Trade, with corn and wheat both hitting new contract lows.

The decline was prompted by growing expectations of widespread rainfall over key growing regions, a forecast that traders consider bearish for prices, analysts said.

Soybeans rallied late in the session, however, “sparked by a report that Brazil has suspended export registration for beans and (soybean) oil,” said Victor Lespinasse, a grain analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds.

Prices of precious metals futures, meanwhile, rose on the Commodity Exchange in New York, with silver pacing the advance.

Traders said the recent weakness in the economy, which has helped push the dollar and U.S. interest rates lower, helped support gold and silver prices.

Although the dollar rebounded Tuesday from a broad decline in the previous session, “the view of the (metals futures) trading community is that the dollar is beginning to skid,” said Jack Barbanel, metals analyst at Gruntal & Co. in New York.