Wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade were mostly lower at midsession on Tuesday on a technical setback, traders said. Wheat opened higher on supportive export news but turned lower in thin trade. "You had a little commercial selling the wheat up toward the highs. You had small fund buying, but nothing very big. It's really pretty light volume," one floor source said.
At 11:10 am CST (1710 GMT), nearby CBOT wheat futures were steady to down 1-1/2 cents per bushel, with March off 1 cent at $3.06-3/4.
Market players were positioning ahead of USDA's January crop reports on Wednesday, which will include winter wheat acreage estimates. The average analyst estimate for US 2005 all-winter wheat seedings was 43.203 million acres, below 2004 seedings of 43.350 million.
The average trade estimate for soft red winter wheat area was 7.531 million acres, down from 8.227 million in 2004. The average estimate for hard red winter wheat area was 31.059 million acres, up from 30.778 million last year.