Early Morning Snippets

There's a story on Dow Jones Newswires this morning saying that China bought three cargoes (180,000 MT) of French feed barley for July/Sep shipment sometime last month.

The Baltic Dry Index closed 55 points down at 2351 yesterday, it has now closed lower for 26 sessions in a row.

Much of last night's strength in CBOT wheat can probably be attributed to fund short-covering. Estimates for that range from 15-25,000 contracts.

The 2010/11 grain harvest in Ukraine so far mounts to 911,000 MT of mostly winter barley as of 1st July, according to the local Ag Ministry.

With fully two months of the 2009/10 marketing year left US soybean exports currently stand at 1.36 billion bushels, against a USDA target of 1.455 billion for the entire period. Existing sales, including those as yet unshipped, for the period have already reached over 1.44 billion. That would suggest that a cut in old crop ending stocks should be on the cards in next week's USDA S&D report due July 9th.

That crop report is likely to be bearish for wheat on the basis of the increased June 1st stocks and acreage figures that the USDA released on Wednesday.

Informa are due to release their global production estimates during CBOT trading hours this afternoon. There will be plenty of interest in what they have to say for problem areas like Russia and Canada.

After two days of steep rises, and with an extended holiday weekend due in the US, logic suggests that tonight we could see futures consolidate somewhat and close a little lower. Corn, and to a lesser degree soybeans, have done rather well to ignore the sharp declines in crude oil this past few days.