eCBOT Close, Early Call

The overnight grains closed with beans around 6-8 cents higher, wheat up 6-9 cents and corn around 4 cents firmer.

July beans hit a nine month high of $12.41 1/4 earlier in the session before settling just below that level at $$12.39 3/4.

Crude oil is $1.26 higher at $69.35/barrel, whilst the dollar is sharply weaker slipping to $1.6240 against the pound and $1.4012 against the euro. The dollar is losing ground today on ideas that a global economic recovery later in the year may lead to a move away from the perceived safety of dollar-based assets.

The dollar has fallen almost 19% against sterling, and by 12.5% against the euro since the beginning of March.

On the weather front in the US getting late-planted beans into the soggy soils of Illinois and Indiana is turning out to be a struggle just like for corn, says Allen Motew of QT Weather. The southern agricultural districts of Illinois and Indiana still have more than half their beans to plant (so far, 41% planted S Indiana/21-47% C and S Illinois) and more rain is on the way, he says, with the next three days bringing three to four inches for Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

Japan is shopping for 124,000 MT of wheat this week, with around half likely to be US origin. Taiwan also bought US wheat overnight. Russia & Egypt finally seem to have reached an accord over the recent quality problems between the two countries. Iraq has bought 250,000 MT Australian/Canadian wheat.

More book-squaring ahead of tomorrows USDA S&D and stocks reports can be expected in what might be a relatively subdued session.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: July corn called 3 to 5 higher;
July soybeans called 6 to 8 higher; July CBOT wheat called 5 to 6 higher.