The US speculators seem obsessed with the idea funds will pick up the underperformers of 2016 in their rebalancing program which generally occurs in mid January every year. This helped wheat sustain some upside which initially resulted from some spill over fundamental buying in the soybean pit.
After two weeks of heavy rain across central Argentina, in which some locations had up to 160mills on Sunday, the punters and farmers alike are starting to call an end to the summer crop planting program for 2016-17. The provinces of Santa Fe and eastern Cordoba seem to be the wettest and oddly enough the lower parts of the Pampas are actually a little dry in places.

Temperatures across parts of the Ukraine and Russia fell considerably over the weekend. There was light to moderate snowfall prior to the freeze so there is currently little chance of winter kill being a problem even with temperatures dropping to as low as -25C. In the US temperatures will slip lower by the end of the week, as low as -20C in the north and then gradually rise back to around 0C by late next week. This should keep the rumour mill turning for the next few days but as in the FSU snow prior to the sharp drop in temperatures is expected to help protect the winter wheat from the freeze.