WASDE: US wheat exports cut, stocks at upper end of expectations

December’s World Agriculture Supply and Demand report from the USDA rebalanced US wheat ending stocks for 2017/18 to reflect weaker export demand in the only major change to last month’s US figures.

The USDA revised upwards ending stocks to 960 million bushels and downward US exports to 975 million from 1 billion bushels.

Analysts had expected ending stocks in the range of 925 million bushels to 960 million bushels, but most were clustered around the 938 million bushels level, which would have been a modest increase on the November figure of 935 million bushels.

However, with exports trimmed, the only outlet was into storage.

Elsewhere, both Canada and the EU saw their production levels increased, although both revisions had broadly been anticipated by the market and already factored in.

“Interesting that the board is holding up as well as it is, although the 3 million mt increase in the Canadian wheat crop along with a 1 million mt boost to the EU total were pretty well anticipated by the market,” analysts at Advance Trading said in a report.

Canada’s wheat production was revised to 30 million mt, while the EU rose to 152.5 million.

The front month December CBOT wheat contract settled back 4 cents/bu immediately after the release to $3.8775/bu, extending a run of uninterrupted losses that has been constant since the start of December.