Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures settled higher on Thursday on technical buying and better-than-expected weekly US export data, traders said. The US Department of Agriculture said export sales in the week to August 15 included 594,600 tonnes of 2019/20 wheat and 4,900 tonnes of 2020/21 wheat. Analysts expected wheat sales of 300,000 to 500,000 tonnes.

CBOT December soft red winter wheat settled up 3-3/4 cents at $4.71-3/4 per bushel. K.C. December hard red winter wheat ended up 3-3/4 cents at $4.04-1/4, but MGEX December spring wheat bucked the firm trend falling 1-1/2 cents to settle at $5.13-1/2.

Contract lows were hit across the board in MGEX spring wheat futures on pressure from soft cash markets and the expanding 2019 US spring wheat harvest. Ahead of Statistics Canada's August 28 crop production report, analysts on average expected the government to report Canadian wheat production at 32.3 million tonnes, up from 31.8 million tonnes in 2018.

Copyright Reuters, 2019