eCBOT Close, Early Call

The overnights closed with beans 7-8 cents higher, corn up a couple and wheat down around 3 cents.

The euro grinds lower as EU ministers say a deal has been done to help Greece, but it's not a financial one. Here's the daily chart vs the USD:

bye bye

First time US jobs claims fell by 43,000 last week, that's more than the 15,000 the market had been anticipating.

Crude oil is flat around USD74-75/barrel. Inventories data is delayed by the weather, as too is the USDA's usual weekly export sales report.

India have agreed to allow wheat to be exported to Nepal. That is being taken as a sign that the government there are happy with winter wheat development, and are confident of another bumper crop March/April.

Indeed, there is some talk that they might be looking, or indeed need, to find some more buyers before new crop comes in. They supposedly had 23 MMT of state-owned reserves on Jan 1st, and estimate that they will have almost 15 MMT of that left on April 1st when they will begin buying new crop wheat at state-support prices.

The problem the Indian government have there is that they will need to take a loss to find buyers on the open global export market.

It would be ironic if they managed to sell some to neighbouring Pakistan, as their wheat crop is in trouble after India diverted all the water to irrigate it's own crops, leaving Pakistani wheat growers literally high and dry.

China keep importing soybeans at a startling rate, they took in 4.08 MMT in January, according to customs data, a 35% increase on a year ago.

They will also start taking in Kazakhstan wheat as early as next month too, according to media reports.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn called 1 to 2 higher; soybeans called 6 to 8 higher; wheat called 1 to 3 lower.