Hard red winter wheat futures on the Kansas City Board of Trade closed mostly higher on Wednesday, marking a recovery after two days of declines, with players busy with spreads and in the options pit, traders said.
The market settled 1 cent lower to 3-1/4 cents higher, with the July contract up 3-1/4 at $3.33. Only July 2006 wheat settled lower, down 1 cent at $3.67, on 2 moves.
Gains came amid a scarcity of market-moving news, with players focused on positioning ahead of first-notice day for the July contract and ahead of the US Department of Agriculture's quarterly grain stocks report due on Thursday.
Spreading between the July and September contracts were most active between 8-1/4 and 8-3/4 cents with Man Financial, FC Stone and ADM all active bull spreaders and ADM, Cargill Investor Services and Refco busy on the bear side.
Notably, General Mills was busy with bullish action in the options pit, buying September $3.60 calls and selling the September $3.20 puts at 2 to 3 cents on a total of 2,800 contracts.
In flat price action, Frontier Futures bought 1,000 September and Fimat USA bought 300 September.
Gains were led by soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade, but were limited by active harvesting of new wheat in the Plains.
For the report tomorrow, analysts on average were expecting US wheat stocks to total on 532 million bushels, down from USDA's year-ago figure of 546 million.
USDA will issue estimates for spring, durum and all-wheat acreage as well. The average analyst estimate for US all-wheat seedings was 58.392 million acres, down from USDA's March 31 estimate of 58.592 million. The average analyst estimate for spring wheat seedings was 14.175 million acres, down from USDA's March 31 figure of 14.371 million.
In overnight export news, Syria rejected all offers and made no sale in a tender to sell and export a total 100,000 tonnes of hard and soft wheat.
Also, Pakistan said it may have to import 500,000 to 700,000 tonnes of wheat because bad weather has damaged its domestic crop.