Overnight Grain Trading Leaves Unclear Start in Grain

The outside markets currently point lower as far as the grains are concerned with crude oil and equities down while the $ is higher. Overnight grain trading ended early this am with modestly higher prices, however, making this morning's opening direction unclear. I am tentatively calling the opening steady/mixed but I suspect we will start lower unless the market knows something we don't.

Conab, the Brazilian version of the USDA, put their bean crop at 57.6 million tonnes vs 57.2 million last month. They estimated their corn crop at 50.4 million tonnes vs 50.3 million last month.

Deliveries were 470 in wheat, 1700 corn and 1900 oil with no beans or meal. Bunge put out 743 corn and Dreyfus stopped 576 corn.

The USDA supply/demand and world production reports will be out Wednesday am. Traders are looking for ending stocks numbers of about 660 million bushels for wheat, 1.810 billion bushels for corn and 200 million bushels for beans. Last month, the USDA put these numbers at 655 wheat, 1.790 corn and 210 beans.

More welcome rain is forecast in parts of China's winter wheat belt the second half of the week. Argentina had a mostly dry weekend with more of the same forecast today through Saturday. More rain would still be welcome, especially since temps are forecast to be above normal. Brazil saw up to 1" of rain over the weekend. It isn't welcome in the north, where it is slowing harvesting and more is forecast there the next 5 days, some of which will be heavy. Light, scattered rain is forecast the next few days in the south, where it is still helpful to late developing beans.

The US southwest winter wheat belt saw some welcome rain in the east over the weekend with more of the same today and the second half of the week. The very dry western parts of the belt will see precipitation Thur-Sat, which will be very beneficial, if it happens as forecast.-- Vic Lespinasse