Wheat futures traded a narrow range to closed mostly flat to lower for the session. There was some technical trade but let’s just call in buy the rumour sell the fact for now. The technical guys are punting around the USDA WASDE report. I think a more exciting punt would be running a book on what date the January report actually makes the light of day considering the US shutdown.
Without these USDA reports the market runs the risk of stagnating and being directed by actual sales and exports……..shock..horror.

Tunisia came out with a 100kt durum tender. Tenders are due in today and the grain is due to be shipped Feb – March. It’s probably safe to assume that Australia will not feature in the list of suppliers for that one. According to PDQ SW Saskatchewan 1CWAD13 is priced at about C$220 ex farm for this time frame. This would make it worth roughly US$315 CIF N.Africa. In turn this would equate to somewhere around AUD$365 NTP Newcastle. A far cry from the $465 delivered end user NNSW most producers can currently achieve for just about any type of wheat.

In India both cold and dry weather is starting to have an impact on flowering chickpeas. Futures values at the NCDEX, for what it’s worth, have been falling in recent days. This sums up India really doesn’t it. Indian consumption is roughly 8mtpa. Government policies on import tariffs would need to be changed to encourage planting in Australia though.