eCBOT Close, Early Call

the overnights closed lower with beans down 6-7 cents, corn down 2-3 cents and wheat off 7-8 cents.

A stronger dollar and weaker crude were largely behind the negative close. Crude is around $1 lower on ideas that the market might be getting a little carried away with hopes of a economic recovery anytime soon. US retail sales for April were down yesterday and OPEC revealed that they had been pumping crude at almost a million barrels/day in excess of their agreed quota. Exactly why that should surprise anyone is another matter.

Weekly export sales for corn were strong, with almost a million tonnes of old crop changing hands. Soybean sales were also fairly decent, with China gain booking both old and new crop. Wheat sales were poor.

Weekly export shipments for corn were a marketing year high.

Japan bought 86,000 MT of wheat in a routine tender, most of it US origin.

Reports that Egypt has impounded some Russian wheat saying that it is "unfit for human consumption" has caused a bit of a stir and may mean a bit more business going away from the Black Sea, but it's early days on that front yet. Russia said that they didn't realise that it was supposed to be fit for human consumption and that they thought it was just Egyptians that were gonna to eat it. Nah, they didn't I made that last bit up.

The dollar is firmer as US weekly jobs data showed 637,000 new claims.

US weather seems finally forecast to improve starting Sunday and continuing all next week. Eastern Corn Belt farmers need a week of drying to get back into their soggy fields for aggressive planting, says Allen Motew of QT Weather.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: Corn 2 to 4 lower, Soybeans 5 to 6 lower, Wheat 8 to 10 lower.