11/02/05 Unwinding wheat spreads

Marketline November 2, 2005 Wheat futures were steady to mostly lower Tuesday with Kansas City and Minneapolis posting larger losses than Chicago as some unwinding of spreads continued. Some observers point to the lack of confirmation of Iraqi business for the weakness in the hard red wheats. Joe Victor of Allendale Incorporated cites some other fundamentals. Victor: "You had the winter wheat crop condition report that jumped from 57% good to excellent to 61% good to excellent. Emergence as well as plantings are doing well. We've had some recent concerns outside the U.S., some global crop conditions that have shown some improvement. The other thing of course was the continuation of spread unwinding." On Tuesday December Chicago wheat was unchanged at 3-17. December corn up a half at 1-96 3/4. Portland cash white wheat steady to two cents lower at mostly 3-56. Club wheat 4-01. PNW HRW 11.5 percent protein lower at 4-61. Dark northern spring 14% protein lower at 5-17. Export barley 105 dollars a ton. Cattle futures were lower Tuesday with live contracts sharply lower. Selling was triggered when technical support was broken. Rolling of positions from December live cattle to February was noted. Dec live cattle down a dollar at 89-93. Jan feeders down 37 at 113-50. Dec Class III milk up nine cents at 13-35. I'm Bob Hoff and that's Marketline on the Northwest Ag Information Network.