Early Call On CBOT

The overnight grains all finished sharply higher with wheat up around 10-13c, corn 8-11c firmer and beans up around 15c.

Corn broke through the USD5/bu mark with consummate ease on reports of frost in northern China potentially damaging corn output there.

Frost is also on the cards for Canada, likely causing quality if not yield losses. As one pundit said "we are going to be swimming in feed grain in Canada this year."

QT Weather today refer to a "widespread crop ending hard freeze" across Northern Alberta southeastward to Central Saskatchewan with the mercury falling to 19-28F. A second hard freeze is forecast to push into the Dakotas on Saturday.

A weak US dollar will add support, as too will news that Brazilian rains may not arrive until second half October.

Parts of eastern Ukraine and Russia remain too dry for planting, with only a third of the intended acreage sow in the latter so far. Meanwhile the harvest is limping along painfully.

There are no such problems in America, indeed the only problem here is deciding what to plant next with many of the newswires already talking of a "fight for acres".

Some chatter suggests that this break through USD5/bu on corn will discourage farmer selling rather than encourage it. The flip side is that it may mean soybeans coming under a bit of selling pressure for many who can't store and/or not sell anything.

We do usually get a seasonal dip in the soybean market in October, but then again we normally do in corn too.

The funds remain well and truly in the driving seat, we can sort out the small matter of where are all the real end-users going to come from at these levels somewhere down the line.

Early calls for this afternoon's session: corn up 8-10c, wheat up 10-12c, beans up 14-16c.