In the overnight, the grains traded higher with corn up 4 ½ cents, soybeans up 2 cents and wheat up 7 ¾ cents. The U.S. dollar is trading sideways this morning after a sharp move higher last Friday. The technical environment for corn looks to be negative this week with the 50 day and 100 day moving average crossing over each other this week. Tomorrow morning the USDA will release their March Supply and Demand report at 11 AM CST.
Analysts are expecting wheat ending stocks to increase to 699 million bushels from 692 in the February report. Total wheat export sales are in line with meeting current USDA expectations, but the rise in the dollar continues to hurt U.S. wheat competitiveness on the global market. Corn ending stocks are expected to decline slightly, falling to 1.826 billion bushels from 1.827 billion in February. Soybean ending stocks are expected to shrink down to 376 million bushels from 385 million bushels in February. Soybean export sales have run well ahead of last year’s pace, already booking 97.7 percent of forecast export sales.
In northern Brazil, minor harvesting delays are expected over the next couple weeks as rain is expected to slow fieldwork. Ports in the region have seen a 61 percent jump in ships waiting to be loaded jumping to 82 ships waiting along the coast from 51 last Friday. Last Thursday the Buenos Aires Grains Exchanged warned that flooding in the Northern Pampas region puts them at risk of downgrading production estimates in weeks to come. Last week they held their production estimates steady.
