Early Call On CBOT

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 13:18 | Categorized as

02/11/10 -- The overnight grains were firmer across the board led by wheat which closed 6-8c higher, corn was 3-4c firmer and beans up 4c.

Wheat led after the USDA cut good/excellent crop ratings by 1 point to 46%, with ratings in the top-producing state of Kansas declining 4 points to 38% good/excellent.

FCStone released the following US crop production estimates yesterday: Corn 12.523 billion (154.1 bpa), down 140 million from the last USDA; Soybeans 3.449 billion (44.9 bpa), up 41 million from the last USDA.

Informa are due out later today, ahead of the USDA's report next Tuesday. Just like FCStone, almost everyone is predicting a smaller corn number again this month.

Egypt may buy US wheat this afternoon. US wheat weekly export inspections yesterday were down 31 percent from last week at 16.188 million bushels.

Soybean inspections were 60.26 million bushels, which was 10.47 million bushels lower than last week’s number. Corn came in at 25.59 million bushels inspected for export, which was 1.6 million higher than last week.

China sold 31% of the corn it offered at this week's government auction. There has still been no confirmation of the widely touted Chinese corn purchases that have supposedly taken place over the last few weeks.

The USDA have today however confirmed the sale of 110,000 HRW wheat to "unknown".

US weather forecasts on the Great Plains look set to remain dry for the next ten days, which will do little to improve wheat ratings.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn and beans up 3-5c, wheat up 8-10c.