eCBOT Close/Early Call/Tonight's Finish

eCBOT futures closed lower overnight with beans down 6-9 cents, corn around 6 cents lower and wheat off around 10-13 cents.

Falling crude oil and a return of a general economic doom and gloom seems to have taken the shine off the recent rally in the grains sector.

In addition some traders seem to be banking a few profits and taking some money off the table ahead of Monday's USDA reports.

Question marks still remain over the outlook for South American crops, with Conab today reducing their estimates for soybean and corn production in Brazil by 1.1mmt and 2.2mmt respectively from last month.

China has been an active importer buying good quantities of beans and corn recently, but the Chinese Lunar New Year is looming later this month. Heavy buying beforehand, followed by a dead couple of weeks afterwards is often the format with them at this time of year.

The USDA reported very poor weekly export sales for wheat today, just 41,900mt, a marketing year low and 90% down from the previous week.

Corn export sales also came in on the low side at 280,600mt against expectations of 400-500,000mt.

Soybeans came in around anticipated levels at 551,100mt.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: Corn futures are expected to open 5 to 7 lower, Soybeans 5 to 7 lower, and Wheat 9 to 11 lower.

In light of the export sales news I'd expect corn and wheat to end up significantly lower today, unless something unforeseen comes out of the blue. They could possibly drag beans down with them. I'll take wheat to end around 25c lower, with corn down 12-15c and beans off a similar amount.