Short fund fund caps and technical purchases due to poor earnings expectations in the state of Kansas caused wheat quotations in Chicago yesterday to close at a nine-month high. Crop Scouts at the annual Kansas City Crop Tour expect average wheat yields of 37.0 bushels per acre (bpa). The 5-year average is 40.98 bpa. With a total of 445,100 tons of US wheat, the weekly export figures were in line with market expectations. Institutional investors yesterday bought 6,500 lots of CBoT SRW wheat. The eCBoT is trading weaker at the moment. At Euronext in Paris, wheat futures benefited from good overseas sentiment and weak euro and gained slightly on all dates. Unfavorable weather conditions in major wheat-growing regions provided additional support. Australia is suffering from a severe drought and the Black Sea region is also expected to experience dry weather in the coming weeks. Yesterday, European traders reported soft wheat exports in a volume of 303,000 tonnes for the week ending May 1, 18. Soft wheat exports thus increase to 16.65 million tonnes in the current marketing year 2017/18. Compared to the previous year, this is a decrease of 22%.
