Wheat prices are fractionally mixed ahead of the USDA data releases. Overnight the May SRW contract kept to a fairly tight 5 cent range, from +2 ¾ to -2 ¼ cents. KC wheat futures ended the day mixed within 1 ¾ cents of UNCH. The soft red winter wheat futures were 2 ½ to 4 cents higher and hard red spring wheat was 3 ¾ cents higher on the day. May SRW is sitting with a 7 ¼ cent loss for the week’s move into Thursday. The new crop SRW/HRW spread tightened to 7 ¼ cents. 

Pre-report surveys show analysts are looking for March 1 wheat stocks to come in at 1.05 bbu on average. The full range of ideas is from 1 billion to 1.08 billion bushels. That would be 106 mbu larger than Mar 1 stocks last year, following a 98 mbu looser yr/yr stockpile on Dec 1. Wheat acreage is estimated at 47.3 million acres vs 49.6m last year. Spring wheat is expected to be near 10.9m acres on average with ~1.7m expected for durum wheat. 

Ahead of the weekly Export Sales report, traders are looking for USDA to report old crop wheat business between 100k MT of cancelations to 300k MT of new sales. New crop bookings are estimated to be between50k MT and 250k MT for the week that ended 3/21.  Russian continues to lowball the world market at the expense of their farmers’ operating margins, with some estimating a record 5 MMT in exports for March.

Interfax estimates Kazakhstan’s grain output between 13 and 14 MMT for 24/25, vs 16.4 MMT last year. Wheat area is estimated to be 3% below last year with 13.3m HA. 

May 24 CBOT Wheat  closed at $5.47 1/2, up 4 cents, currently UNCH

Jul 24 CBOT Wheat  closed at $5.62 3/4, up 3 1/2 cents, currently up 1/4 cent

May 24 KCBT Wheat  closed at $5.78 1/4, up 1 cent, currently UNCH

Jul 24 KCBT Wheat  closed at $5.74, unch, currently down 1/2 cent

May 24 MGEX Wheat  closed at $6.51, up 3 3/4 cents, currently down 1/2 cent