GRAINS-Corn falls on profit-taking after reaching 6-month high

Updates with US market open

By Renee Hickman

CHICAGO, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Chicago Board of Trade corn futures turned lower on profit-taking after the benchmark contract Cv1 hit a six-month high, in choppy trade ahead of year-end, market analysts said.

Soybean futures were mixed and wheat futures ticked higher, as traders squared their year-end positions to show profits on their books, analysts said.

"We’re also seeing some erratic movement in some of the thinner traded markets in these holiday conditions due to the low volume," Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX, said in a client note.

The CBOT's most-active corn contract Cv1 was down 2-1/2 cents to $4.51-1/2 a bushel at 11:13 a.m. CST (1713 GMT), after hitting its highest point since mid-June earlier in the session at $4.59.

The most-active soybean contract Sv1 was down 1/4 cent at $9.89-1/2 per bushel, while wheat Wv1 rose 1/2 cent to $5.47 a bushel.

The erratic price moves were largely driven by year-end positioning, said Karl Setzer, a partner at Consus Ag Consulting.

"We saw the session start out today with some short-covering," Setzer said. But he said "once that was accomplished, traders were walking away from the market."

Still, traders are keeping an eye on moisture concerns in Argentina's corn- and soy-growing regions, where weather has been hot and dry, as well as in leading wheat producer Russia.

Hot, dry weather in Argentina, a major exporter of soy byproducts and corn, kept a floor under soybean and corn futures, with worries developing about potential stress on the crops in the coming weeks, according to Commodity Weather Group.

Conditions for winter wheat crops are also expected to worsen in Russia's central and Volga areas in January as warmer-than-usual weather and excess moisture cause sprouts to keep growing during the winter, the state weather agency said Saturday.

(Reporting by Renee Hickman in Chicago, additional reporting Gus Trompiz in Paris and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Rod Nickel)

((renee.hickman@thomsonreuters.com))