CBOT March wheat settled down 9-1/2 cents at $4.69 per bushel after reaching $4.81-1/2 in early moves, its highest since Dec. 22. K.C. hard red winter and MGEX spring wheat futures also closed lower, following CBOT wheat on technical selling ahead of Tuesday's US Department of Agriculture reports.
The government is scheduled to release its first estimates of US winter wheat seedings for 2016 harvest, along with quarterly US grain stocks and monthly US and world supply/demand reports. The average estimate of US 2016 winter wheat plantings among analysts surveyed by Reuters was 39.320 million acres, down from the 39.461 million acres planted a year earlier and the lowest since 2010. The average trade estimate for US Dec. 1 all-wheat stocks was 1.698 billion bushels, the most in five years, if realized. CBOT futures fell despite weekly supplemental Commitments of Traders data from the US CFTC showing that non-commercial traders held the largest net short position in CBOT wheat in records dating to 2006.