• Friday’s WASDE report saw bean ending stock projection reduced to 290 million bushels (Mbu) compared with ideas in the mid 300Mbu range. Corn stock was projected at 2.17 billion bushels, nominally higher than expected, and all wheat was as expected at 883Mbu.  Row crop yields were only lightly touched, with corn down a tenth of a bushel to 178.4 bu/ac and beans unchanged at 51.9 bu/ac but corn acres were cut by 1 million to 90.9 and beans by 700,000 to 83.1 million acres.
• Markets also saw updated Farm Service Agency acreage figures, which Prevent Plant acres up to 10.2 million. Changes to this data have slowed down as the dataset nears completion.
• Fund positions from the weekly Commitment of Traders  (COT) report confirmed large increases in fund length with corn positions up 27k, beans +9k (record for this part of the season).  Chicago wheat was +18k and KC +9k.  As always these are delayed and do not reflect trade from the second half of the week.
• Weather maps remain very dry for Black Sea region winter wheat areas and there’s next to nothing forecast all the way through the two week outlooks.  Concerns have continued to build about the expanding drought there and each continued dry run is increasing the worries.
• Weather maps are also not optimistic for US Hard Red Winter wheat areas, with almost all the hurricane rainfall concentrated east of the Mississippi River.
• Algeria’s OAIC is reportedly back tendering for wheat again and with updated specs that de-facto open the door to more Russian wheat and risks cutting into EU wheat demand.

Australia