December wheat traded 7 1/2 cents lower overnight. The US Dollar was lower again overnight.

Wheat futures remained the leader to the downside yesterday, and prices were lower again overnight. Wheat lost sharply to corn yesterday, but traded about even with corn in the December contracts overnight. The USDA will issue its latest Export Sales Report this morning, and traders are looking for a smaller total than was seen last week when Iran's big purchase of hard red wheat was included. Turkey, Syria and Jordan have announced tenders in recent days to spruce up a wheat tender calendar that had gotten rather quiet over the past 1-2 weeks. Basis levels at the Gulf remain near the historic lows with an erosion of some 35-40 cents over the past two weeks or more, according to traders there. Traders say that this erosion was largely due to the slowing export calendar, but that it is also due to ample supplies of US soft wheat that holders are more than willing to sell at current levels. In addition, projected world supplies of soft wheat continue to increase with private forecasters in Europe raising production forecasts for the EU again this week. In contrast, private forecasters in Australia have signaled this week that recent rains in the critical eastern state of New South Wales have not allowed the crop there to fully recover and that production forecasts may need to be lower accordingly.

The eastern spring wheat belt in the US is seeing some rain this morning, but conditions should be dry through the weekend allowing harvest to remain at a faster than normal pace. Turkey is tendering for 250,000 tonnes of wheat including 50,000 tonnes of soft wheat. They are also tendering for 50,000 tonnes of durum. Syria is in the market for 120,000 tonnes of soft wheat from any origin. Jordan has also issued a fresh tender for 100,000 tonnes of wheat.