A lower start is expected this am on followthrough selling from yesterday's major break. The early call is 5-7 down in wheat, 15-20 off in corn and 3-4 down in beans. The $ is modestly weaker this am, which could temper losses somewhat in the grains.

Corn will have an expanded 45 cent limit today due to yesterday's 30 cent limit losses. Much larger than normal corn volume was seen in overnight trading with 56,000 Mar alone trading. Surprisingly, open interest increased yesterday despite massive long liquidation with corn open interest up 6000, beans up 4000 and wheat up almost 4000.

The index funds were late buyers again yesterday with the exception of corn but they are expected to be buyers again on the close in this pit today, unless it is limit down, which would be highly unlikely given the 45 cent limit. Since the index funds didn't buy any corn yesterday, they will make up for this by buying on Friday's close (or buy twice as much on today's close, according to some traders).

Egypt is in the market for optional origin wheat but they probably will not buy any US wheat as our prices remain non-competitive in the world market. The USDA announced this am the sale of 116,000 tonnes of US corn to an unknown destination and 107,000 tonnes sold to Japan, both for 2009-10.

Jan futures expire at noon US Central time, Thursday.

Favorable weather is forecast to continue in the southwest winter wheat belt with no extreme cold weather threat in sight. Argentina will be mostly dry today through Sunday with scattered rain forecast to return early next week. Brazil had up to 1 1/2" scattered rain the last 24 hours and more of the same is predicted the rest of this week into early next. Conditions remain very favorable in most of Argentina and Brazil.