It truly appears that there’s not a bear anywhere to be found in the Chicago Board of Trade commodity markets. As soon as the USDA on Tuesday cut its estimates of how much corn, soybeans and wheat will be left at the end of the marketing year, Goldman Sachs turned around and raised its 2008 price forecasts for soybeans to $14.50 a bushel, corn to $5.30 and wheat to $7.50. Then the Senate approved on Thursday the energy bill that would require the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 — five times more than this year’s output.

    By Friday, Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures hit an all-time high of $9.81-3/4, soybeans rose to a 34-year top of over $11.60 and corn continues to trade over $4, far above its decade-long average of $2.40.

    As CBOT traders like to say: “No one wants to get in front of this freight train.”

    Traditionally, the week before the holidays is pretty slow in Chicago. Every pit has a party, typically on the trading floor followed by refreshments at their favorite bar after the markets close. But as said before — there’s nothing traditional, typical, historical about today’s markets.

    Next week traders will be watching:

    Open interest. After Friday’s rally, traders will be checking open interest in corn, wheat, soybeans and soymeal to see if it jumped — meaning new longs entered the market — or it fell — a sign of short covering. Given the anonymity of screen-trading, it’s impossible to know who’s moving the markets day to day.

    Trade data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. CFTC trade data issued Friday showed that managed funds and other large speculators expanded their net long positions in corn to 122,000 contracts and in soybeans to 138,000 in the week ended Dec. 11. (On the side, the building of huge long positions by specs, an inflationary factor, is increasingly getting on the nerves of grain merchants as they question the hedging viability of CBOT contracts.) But funds were still short CBOT wheat by some 23,000 lots which could explain part of wheat’s strength last week in addition to USDA cutting its U.S. wheat end stocks estimate to the lowest in 60 years this week.

    South American weather. It’s crucial that South American weather poses no threat to corn and soybean yields this year. This is especially true for soybeans as the world, hungry for food and fuel, is counting on Argentina and Brazil to pick up the slack from the U.S., the No. 1 soy producer, after American farmers planted a smaller crop in 2007. Already, South American weather is playing into prices even though the critical yield determining period is January for corn and February for soybeans. The strongest La Nina in 20 years is raising concerns that Argentina and southern Brazil could see a dry growing season because of it. Right now, traders are focused on Argentina, which has been dry up until this week when it saw surprise rains on Thursday.

    Export business. The value of the dollar, rumors of fresh business will stir prices.

    Energy markets. Over the last few weeks there’s been less correlation between corn and soybean prices in relation to the New York crude oil. But soybean oil, a major ingredient to produce biodiesel, continues to track crude oil pretty closely.

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