May wheat was 1 1/4 cents lower overnight. The dollar index was moderately lower.

The May wheat contract made new contract lows four days in a row into yesterday’s session. However, traders indicate that the market saw a lack of sell orders following each of these lows and yesterday’s reaction was a late surge to new highs for the week. This came amid general evening up in the grain markets ahead of today’s Planting Intentions and Grain Stocks reports from the USDA.

On the plantings report, traders are looking for spring wheat acreage to be up about 250,000 acres from last year’s 13.3 million. They are expecting all-wheat area to come in about 5.8 million below last year’s total of 59.1 million acres. This drop is due to the sharp reduction in winter wheat acreage that was reported in January.

The stocks report as of March 1st is expected to show an increase in wheat of nearly 435 million bushels from 1.040 billion at the same point last year. This includes record large supplies of soft red wheat.

Weather forecasts call for dry conditions through hard and soft red winter wheat areas with light to moderate showers reaching into Nebraska and the Dakotas on Friday. Heavier rains are then expected into Saturday in a broad swath of the soft red winter wheat belt that ranges from Arkansas to Illinois with moderate amounts in adjacent soft red areas. This is mostly beneficial, but some areas could become saturated over the short term, and that might raise some concerns over plant disease if the weather stays warm and wet.

In yesterday’s action, wheat was the leader to the upside for most of the day, and this was capped by a late burst to new highs for the week prior to the close. Traders said that inter-commodity spreading was one of the features as traders evened up ahead of today’s reports. This included buying in wheat versus selling in corn. Libya bought an unknown quantity of wheat from the EU yesterday on a tender for 60,000 tonnes according to traders in Europe
Bron:CME