• CBOT markets are all approaching the close in positive territory although wheat is well off its daily high. London wheat also saw a huge (by London standards) trading range with May ’15 spanning £8.00/mt before closing at the lows of the day and also lower on the day.

• MATIF wheat (Jan ’15) is now trading at a premium of £22.45 to its London counterpart having been a single digit premium not too long ago. The value of milling grade wheat is beginning to make its mark – at last!

• The USDA has today released its weekly export figures as detailed below:

Wheat: 509,400 mt, which is above estimates of 250,000-450,000 mt.
Corn: 698,400 mt, which is within estimates of 650,000-850,000 mt.
Soybeans: 1,046,000 mt, which is above estimates of 600,000-800,000 mt.
Soybean Meal: 146,800 mt, which is above estimates of 0-100,000 mt.
Soybean Oil: 38,800 mt which is above estimates of 5,000-20,000 mt.

• Brussels issued weekly wheat export certificates totalling 567,797 mt, which brings the season total to 14,465,402 mt. This is 436,720 mt (3.11%) ahead of last year’s record pace.

• Other data releases today came from Brazil with Abiove raising its estimate of their 2014/15 soybean crop by 900,000 mt to 91.9 million mt. The Argentine AgMin put their 2014/15 wheat  crop at 13.2 million mt, which is a 1.2 million mt uplift from the last estimate. They also increased the 2014/15 soybean area by 100,000 ha to 20.2 million ha.

• In the aftermath of yesterday’s “market carnage” following the quasi ban on exports by Russia we have seen some consolidation and acceptance of the situation, and risk is now costed into prices, The USDA has issued its 2015/16 baseline crop estimates which, as ever, gave little cause for eyebrow raising. However, one number did raise a question, and that is the overall reduction of 3.8 million acres in total cropped area. Given relatively high prices at present this seems something of an oddity, but that aside the projections appear to affirm the longer term bearish trend if assumed trend yield proves correct – and at this early stage it would be unwise to assume anything else!