Late Call On Chicago

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 14:56 | Categorized as

15/12/11 -- The overnight Globex session saw beans finish around 8 cents firmer, with wheat 3-5 cents higher and corn flat. Crude is around 30 cents higher following yesterday's rout.

There's a bit of calm around today, but we all know that this can change at a moments notice. Spain managed to auction off EUR6 billion of bonds without difficulty, and at better rates than previously.

The USDA reported wheat export sales of 318,400 MT, corn sales of 504,700 MT and bean sales of 468,600 MT plus a small amount of 2012/13 corn. All three were in line with expectations. China took 123,700 MT of the corn and 354,200 MT of the beans.

Wheat shipments were 539,300 MT, the best for six weeks, and for once beating the level required to meet the USDA's 2011/12 sales target of 24.5 MMT.

SovEcon raised their Russian grain production estimate this season by 2 MMT to 92 MMT, with wheat output increased by 1 MMT to 56.5 MMT.

Ukraine says that only a very small area of corn there is left to harvest. The ministry there is expecting a clean weight grain crop of a record 56.4 MMT, of which 22.4 MMT is wheat (up 33% on last year) and 22.3 MMT is corn (+87%).

Dryness in Brazil and Argentina is catching a few eyes, although it's very early days to call it a drought yet.

Early calls for this afternoon: corn flat, wheat up 3-5 cents, beans up 7-9 cents.