Technical buying coming after the last few sessions were generally lower seemed to be the only thing supporting US wheat futures in overnight trade. Since the high on January 21st SRWW futures at Chicago have slipped 24.25c/bu (AUD$13.36/t). During that times the CME Platts Aussie FOB wheat contract hardly went anywhere and closed at US$269.75 for the April contract.
Currently the Platts contract is not actively trading but it will be interesting to watch the correlation between it, the ASX and the cash market once we see a decent wheat crop. At the moment we see the Platts about $10 over east coast ASX May and about $4 over the west coast cash market, so I guess plenty of basis opportunity to play with for the punters. The Platts product is cash settled though.

The international market was generally pretty light on for new news overnight. The coronavirus is still getting traction but people are losing interest in it pretty quickly. It’s not SARS or a deadly Flu, it’s basically a pretty bad cold that can give the weak or elderly pneumonia, yes that is terrible but it doesn’t pose the threat the media would love it too.
With 22 different countries initiating trade restriction and travel bans to China because of WHO assessments it does tend to make one wonder if the initial reaction was planned or simply a knee jerk reaction with SARS in the memory. With just 427 deaths reported to date and 75% of those deaths in the elderly with pre-existing conditions the reactions do seem a little hyped up. I guess in a world of Ebola and SARS it probably pays to be safe than sorry.