CBOT Early Call

The overnight grains closed with very little change. Crude oil is around a dollar easier after the US Energy Dept said that US stocks rose by 1.8 million barrels last week. The dollar is a bit firmer overall.

Export sales were bullish for corn at over 1.4 MMT, beans and wheat were in line with expectations.

Egypt bought 120,000 MT of US corn this am. The soybean sales were a tad flat, but don't include more than 570,000 MT sold to China so far this week.

After ideal planting conditions much of the Midwest is in for a soaking starting tomorrow, that may slow planting up a bit but that hardly sounds like a terrible thing.

Argentina seem to think that maybe they haven;t got the 54-55 MMT soybean crop that most have been latterly forecasting, the Ministry now say maybe "only" 52.5 MMT.

US soybean crush data is friendly at 156.142 million bushels. That indicates that the USDA's current projections for 2009/10 crush are too low.

Also supportive is China keeping coming back for more, despite record crops in South America.

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