Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) wheat futures dropped to their lowest levels in more than a year, falling to new contract lows on Thursday, on pressure from a strengthening dollar and market doubts over the ongoing pace of US export sales, traders said. All the Kansas City hard red winter wheat futures, except for September 2020, also fell to new contract lows on Thursday.
CBOT May soft red winter wheat settled down 11-3/4 cents at $4.38-1/4 per bushel. K.C. May hard red winter wheat ended down 11 cents at $4.27-1/2 a bushel, while MGEX May spring wheat settled unchanged at $5.53. US export sales of old and new wheat crop totaled 826,700 tonnes for the week ended February 28, according to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released on Thursday.
Ahead of Thursday's USDA weekly export sales report, traders expected the government to report weekly US wheat sales at 200,000 to 500,000 tonnes. Increasingly tough competition from the Black Sea region has the market worried that any uptick in wheat exports could be an exception, rather than a sign of mounting demand for US wheat, traders said.