Early Call On CBOT

The overnight grains closed firmer, led by wheat which posted gains of around 20-26 cents. Beans added around 8-10 cents and corn 5-6 cents.

It's the same old, same old, with Russian drought losses and possible export embargoes, or at the very least quotas and all sorts of other red tape hoops to jump through for Black Sea exporters keeping the market very firm.

Egypt are back in the market again for wheat with indecent haste, following their last tender only a few days ago. It seems that they will be having to pay at least USD14/tonne more than they did at the weekend, although it looks like Russian wheat is still substantially cheaper than EU or French grain.

Defaults, or the threat of them, is another subject rearing it's head as it frequently does when prices move by this sort of magnitude in such a short period of time. That potentially means that some existing business might have to be bought in again, if some prominent exporting nations change the rules halfway through the game.

Corn is following wheat higher, despite FC Stone estimating US corn crop to yield 165.8 bushels/acre, more than 2 bu/acre up on the USDA last estimate of 163.5 bu/acre.

FC Stone are also expecting a higher soybean yield guessing 44.0 bu/acre against the USDA last estimate of 42.9 bu/acre.

The USDA today reported another new crop soybean sale to China, this time it was for 121,000 MT on top of 223,000 MT sold to the same buyer yesterday.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: Wheat up 20-25c; Soybeans up 8-10c; Corn up 4-6c.