Funds sell and wheat futures drop

Market Line July 15, 2009 Funds turned sellers Tuesday and wheat futures gave back about half of the big gains they had Monday. Forecasts are getting drier for wheat harvest in the Midwest and Louise Gartner for the Linn Group at the Chicago Board of Trade says northern plains spring wheat looks good.

Gartner: “Moving on north into North Dakota, even though plantings were very late in some regions the crop is looking excellent and it‘s cueing up to be a very big crop coming out of the Dakotas for spring wheat.”

Gartner says recent rains in Canada have also helped keep further damage from occurring to the wheat crop there.

On Tuesday Chicago September wheat was down 12 ¾ cents at 5-30. September corn down 6 ¾ at 3-38 ½. Portland soft white wheat down a dime at mostly 5-40. Club wheat mostly 6-20. August new crop soft white seven to eight cents lower at 5-40 to 5-52. HRW 11.5 % protein 10-13 cents lower at $6. DNS 14% protein down seven cents at 7-14. No Portland barley bids.

With the exception of the August live contract cattle futures closed lower Tuesday. Higher boxed beef was said to help nearby live cattle with profit taking and contract spreading impacting other contracts. Feeders also saw profit taking and got pressure from futures’ premium to the CME cash index. August live cattle up 27 cents at 85-05. August feeders down 67 at 103-12.

August Class III milk down eight cents at 10-29.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Market Line on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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