eCBOT Close, Early Call

The overnight grains closed higher with December corn up 1 1/4 cents higher at $3.46 3/4, September wheat 6 3/4 cents higher at $5.36 3/4, and November soybeans 10 cents higher at $9.28.

A combination of a weak dollar and firmer crude oil and equities added strength from the outside markets.

The stock market will be hoping that strong results from Goldman Sachs and Intel yesterday will be replicated by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, and Citigroup.

There's still plenty of rain around the Midwest, if anything they may be starting to complain that there's too much before long. Additionally, whist there is no heat stress in sight, a case could be made for saying that things are a little too cool as well!

Computer model guidance says the remainder of July and the first days of August will be cooler than normal for the Corn Belt, according to Allen Motew of QT Weather. Temperatures across large parts of the Midwest are set to be 8-12 degrees cooler than normal this weekend, he says.

A measure of how cold it has been is the accumulation of Growing Degree Day units (GDD’s), most of the Corn Belt from Nebraska to N Ohio is far behind. GDD’s are closer to normal in S Missouri, S Illinois, W Kentucky and SW Ohio only. The July trend has been for increasing departures and deficits all across the Corn Belt from Wisconsin to Virginia as record cold appears on a daily basis, he adds.

Weather concerns are also emerging in India and Russia. Significant crop losses have been reported in the latter with the Russian Ag Ministry dropping their grain production estimate to 85 MMT from 108.1 MMT a year ago.

Although we are in the midst of harvesting in Europe, producer selling remains light. The wheat market frequently bottoms around this time of year both here and in the US, but there could be a bit more downside for the beans yet.

As with last year wheat started it's current decline a little earlier than beans, suggesting that it will be the first to bottom too.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn called steady to 2 higher; beans called 8 to 10 higher; wheat called 5 to 7 higher.