Early Call On Chicago

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 13:44 | Categorized as

30/12/10 -- The overnight grains were mixed to mostly lower with wheat leading the way down 8-10c. Corn was down 2-3c and beans flat to up 1c.

Crude oil is weaker at USD90.60/barrel and the US dollar is also down a tad.

Nobody seems to be expecting too many fireworks today/tomorrow although there may be some modest booking of profits just in case weather forecasts change over the weekend.

There's uncertainty surrounding precipitation chances on the US Plains and some forecasters are also citing a better chance of rains in Argentina than they were calling for yesterday.

The USDA's weekly export sales didn't provide any major surprises, and the trade seems to be slipping into the weekend semi-comatosed already and looking forward to everything being back to normal next week.

Respected South American analyst Michael Cordonnier is said to have cut his forecast for Argy soybean production by 1 MMT to 48 MMT today, citing "irregular" rains. The revised estimate is fully 4 MMT lower than the USDA's latest forecast.

Bangladesh is in the market for 50,000 MT of wheat.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: beans up 1-2c, corn down 2-4c, wheat down 7-9c.