March wheat was up 10 3/4 cents late in the overnight session. Outside markets look positive for today with a focus on USDA reports. The market tone will be set by results of the USDA reports this morning. For the winter wheat plantings report, traders see plantings just under 41 million acres as compared with 37.335 million last year. Crop conditions for the hard red winter wheat crop are poor, and this leaves the crop a little more vulnerable to winterkill damage in areas which do not have snow cover. For the December 1st stocks report, traders see stocks near 150 million bushels above last year which was 1.782 billion bushels. For the supply/demand report, traders see ending stocks dropping about 10 million bushels from last months estimate of 858 million bushels for the 2010/11 season. World ending stocks are expected to slip to near 174.6 million tonnes from 176.7 million last month but some traders see higher Argentina and India production. The late sell-off drove March wheat to the lowest level since December 22nd yesterday with the market closing lower for the 4th session in a row. Weakness in soybeans helped to spark some long liquidation selling. The market has been unable to take out the previous day’s highs for the 4th session in a row. Talk of some quality damage for the remaining Australia harvest plus some talk of potential damage for parts of the winter wheat belt which are not covered with snow helped to support the early bounce. Australia has the extra issue this morning of moving the wheat crop on the world market with a key grain port shutting down overnight due to flooding. Queensland is one of the smallest wheat export ports, however, so the impact may be small. French officials this morning raised their wheat export forecast (exports out of the EU) by 200,000 tonnes to a record high 11.8 million tonnes. A setback in soybeans from the higher opening plus a lack of aggressive new buying support from speculators may have contributed to the selling pressures late yesterday. The USDA announced a sale of 155,000 tonnes of US wheat to unknown destination. Turkey bought 300,000 tonnes of wheat in their tender with 260,000 coming from the US.

Bron: CME