May wheat was down 6 1/4 cents late in the overnight session. Outside market forces looked mostly negative, but a weaker US dollar was a partial offset. Deliveries against the March contract came in at 36 contracts overnight. Japan’s food import needs look significant. It is the world’s second largest importer of wheat. The market seems to have priced in larger wheat crops in China, India and the US due to recently improved weather. However, parts of the US southern plains (the western half of Kansas, Oklahoma and West Texas) are dry and will need more rains to bust their drought. There is little rain in the forecast for the next week, and temperatures look to be heating up. Traders expect to see poor crop conditions in this afternoon’s weekly crop updates, and they will also expect deteriorating conditions for the next few weeks if the forecast stays dry. Jordan is tendering to buy 100,000 tonnes of wheat. The market saw a bounce into the mid-session Friday, but sellers became more active late in the day. May wheat closed 21 3/4 cents lower on the session Friday and lost $1.13 1/2 for the week. More long liquidation selling (which had been seen all week) along with concerns that there could be a slowdown in wheat movement over the near-term (because as Japan usually an active buyer of US wheat and could be absent in the face of infrastructure damage) helped to spark the long liquidation selling trend. Talk of a dry weather trend for the southern plains for the next week was seen as a potential positive force. Focus may shift to the weather and growing conditions for the last half of the month. The Commitments of Traders reports as of March 8th showed non-commercial traders were net long 19,132 contracts, a slight increase for the week. Commodity index traders held a net long position of 214,426 contracts. This represents an increase of 824 contracts for the week. As of this morning, ports in Japan appear to be open enough to allow increased movement of food. Japan bought 135,823 tonnes of wheat at their weekly tender last week.

Bron: CME