eCBOT Close, Early Call

The overnight markets closed with beans around 7 cents lower, wheat down 6-8 cents and corn off around 3-4 cents.

A firmer dollar and crude oil down the best part of USD1.50/barrel are just adding to the market's woes. Still reeling from last week's USDA numbers, we now also have increased soybean production estimates from Oil World for both Brazil and Argentina, plus further evidence of China tightening monetary policy.

The latter might trim China's seemingly insatiable appetite for soybeans, in addition to demand surely switching to South America before too long. Still, the US have certainly had a pretty good run at things from the Chinese demand perspective in the last six months, and can hardly complain too loudly.

An ice storm moving into the heart of the US corn belt will do little to help what is still standing in the fields.

Wheat remains friendless. Bangladesh may buy up to 400,000 MT of wheat in a tender in the next week or so, but neither US or EU wheat is holding out much hope of getting a look in.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session are wheat 8-10 cents lower, corn 2-4 cents easier and soybeans down 4-6 cents.