A mixed but mostly lower start is expected this am with wheat steady/up 1, corn down 1-2 and beans off 3-5. Crude oil is down triple digits, a negative background feature for corn and bean oil. The $ is a shade lower, not enough to make much difference to the grains. The main event this week other than reacting to the latest weather developments will be waiting for and evening up ahead of Friday morning's big USDA Oct crop report. Trade averages for this report should be out by tomorow at the latest.

Prices were much weaker Friday with beans hitting their lowest level since mid July. Despite this big sell off, open interest jumped 10,000 in corn and 7000 in beans, suggesting a lot of new shorts are in the market. Some of them will no doubt want to even up ahead of Friday's report but much of this will probably not take place until Wed-Thur.

Chinese markets will remain closed until Friday so we probably (but not for certain) won't get any big sales announcements of US beans to China at least until Friday.

Widespread rain is forecast in Argentine wheat areas this coming weekend, which will be very welcome. Rain is falling much further north in India than normal for this time of year, benefiting winter wheat but slowing harvesting for other crops.

The US delta had rain over the weekend and more is forecast this week, further delaying bean harvesting there. Scattered rain is forecast this week in the southwest winter wheat belt, where it is welcome. The Midwest saw light, widely-scattered weekend rain along with cold temps in the west. Up to 1" of rain is forecast in the west tonight and tomorrow with more possible the second half of the week. A hard freeze, with temps below 28 degrees for at least a couple of hours, is possible in the northern part of the Midwest between Thur-Sat. The eastern part of the belt will see scattered rain tomorrow and again Thur-Fri along with cold temps.