Early Call On Chicago

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 14:38 | Categorized as

27/04/12 -- The overnight gains saw soybeans around 10-12 cents higher, with corn up 2-6 cents and wheat 4-5 cents firmer. Crude is a bit weaker and so too the dollar - the latter should help the grains this afternoon.

The USDA have announced the sale of 120,000 MT of old crop corn to China along with a monster 1.44 MMT of new crop to "unknown". The trade has made a pretty good job of shrugging off these corn sales to unknown/China this week, let's see what it makes of that today.

In addition, the USDA have reported sales of 110,000 MT of new crop soybeans to China plus 116,000 MT to "unknown".

The IGC say that China's corn imports will jump 50% in 2012/13 to 6 MMT from 4 MMT this season. It already looks like that may be conservative.

Meanwhile Argy corn and soybean production estimates keep shrinking.

Yesterday's weekly export sales were strong for beans, corn and wheat. They were also heavily weighted in favour of old crop for beans and corn, no wonder the differential between the nearby and the deferred months widened yesterday, a trend that looks set to continue today judging by the overnight action.

For the week as a whole, including the overnight market, we have May beans up 46 3/4 cents, with new crop Nov rising a more modest 9 1/2 cents. May corn is up 27 1/2 and Dec up just a 1/4 cent. May wheat is up 15 cents.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn and wheat up 4-6 cents and soybeans 10-12 cents higher.