eCBOT Close

The overnights closed lower, taking a breather from recent rallies that pushed soybeans close to eight month highs and CBOT wheat to its highest levels since January.

Beans closed with losses of around 9-14 cents nearby and 3-4 cents in new crop months. Old crop declined on renewed talk of Chinese cancellations and/or at the very least deferring some existing orders.

Chinese soybean futures closed higher as cash supplies stay tight due to aggressive government stockpiling. Further evidence, or otherwise, of China booking further US beans may be revealed in the USDA weekly export sales report due at 13.30BST. Trade expectations for that are beans 650-800,000MT; corn 850-1.1MMT; wheat 300-400,000MT.

Corn and wheat closed around 3-5 cents lower, dragged down by weaker outside markets as crude fell from it's highest closing levels since November and global equities also took a tumble. In Europe the FTSE, DAX and CAC are all down around 1.5-2% after Federal Reserve minutes showed that the central bank has lowered its forecast for US growth. Wall Street is expected to follow suit and open lower.

Crude is around a dollar easier on evidence that demand is continuing to shrink despite refiners best efforts to keep supplies tight.

Japan bought 107,000MT of wheat in a routine tender, mostly of US origin.

For global wheat crops dryness in Eastern Europe and Argentina plus too much rain in the US remains a threat to yields and/or plantings.