Early Call On Chicago

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 13:44 | Categorized as

06/01/12 -- The overnight grains finished with wheat and soybeans around 6-7 cents higher and corn up 4-5 cents. Crude oil is up around half a dollar.

It looks like we are in for a modest correction from last night's losses with Argy weather forecasts looking a little drier than yesterday. Heat is set to dominate this weekend.

Strong US jobs numbers today should also support. Figures just out show that the US economy added 200,000 jobs in December, beating expectations. The data also says that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% in December, the lowest level in nearly 3 years. The market was expecting 155,000 jobs added and unemployment at 8.5%.

It's not all good news however. The USDA reported weekly export sales for corn, beans and wheat were all disappointing.

Wheat sales of 138,600 MT for the 2011/12 marketing year were down 68 percent from the previous week, down 64 percent on the 4-week average and a marketing-year low. There was also a small 29,500 MT sale for delivery in 2012/13. That fell well short of the 300-500,000 MT that the trade was expecting.

Corn sales of 299,500 MT for 2011/12 and 6,500 MT for delivery in 2012/13 just about fell within the range of 300-600,000 MT that the trade anticipated.

Soybean sales of 281,300 MT for the 2011/12 were below trade ideas of 400-600,000 MT.

Wheat shipments of 425,800 MT again failed to meet the level required to hit the USDA's overall marketing year target.

Egypt has bought two cargoes of French wheat, one of Ukraine wheat and one of Russian/Kazakh origin. Tunisia has bought 50,000 MT of what will probably be French milling wheat.

The Argy government has announced new less restrictive measures will apply to wheat exports from the end of this month, and that the same rules should be introduced for corn a month down the line.

The Eurozone juggernaut rumbles on out of control with yields on Spanish and Italian bonds back on the rise and Hungary getting another sovereign debt downgrade.

Informa are out with their latest S&D numbers mid-session ahead of the USDA next Thursday. This could be an interesting session ahead of the weekend. On the week so far wheat is down sharply, corn down a tad and beans up a little.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: Corn 4-5 cents higher, beans and wheat 6-8 cents higher.