With futures continuing to fall early in the session corn was the only US grain futures contract to dig out a little bargain hunting by the close. Wheat and soybean futures at Chicago couldn’t recover and closed lower. Wheat has closed lower in 12 of the last 18 sessions in the US with soft red wheat futures for July losing 53.75c/bu for June, almost AUD$27/t.
Wheat found pressure from both the northern hemisphere harvest and continued long liquidation as the punters get out of July contracts. Volume on the July contract is shrinking quickly though so hopefully this will have less of an impact as we move into next week.

Egypt picked up 120kt of Russian wheat overnight. Values have drifted lower as new crop supplied hit the world market. The lowest offer in the tender came from Aston supplying Russian wheat with 60kt offered at just US$201.95 FOB.  The highest offer in the mix was for Romanian wheat with Ameropa showing 60kt at US$208.69 / tonne. This makes the highest offer still lower than where much of the old crop business was done a couple of months ago. Freight for the lowest offer comes in at around US$15.55 / tonne resulting in a C&F price of about US$217.50.

The US winter wheat harvest is just over 50% complete in Kansas. Storms may slow the progress a little over the weekend but the pace so far has been good and local basis and cash bids in the US continue to weaken as volume for sale increases.