Monday Morning Snippets

eCBOT is firmer across the board with beans, wheat and corn all up around 10-14 cents. It seems that the "fight for acres" in the US next season has already begun after Informa slashed their projected corn acreage numbers by 3.6m acres late Friday.

Chinese soybean futures were higher Monday, led by strong gains in soymeal prices as feedmills build up their stocks ahead of the year-end holidays.

The Chinese government is holding onto it's wheat stocks, selling just 294,593mt on the domestic market last week, at this time of year the government would normally auction off around 1mmt/week sources say.

Rabobank has cut it's Australian wheat production forecast by 1mmt to 19.5mmt. The barley crop there has been hit by a mystery fungus.

Just vefore 9am GMT the pound is at $1.5022 and 1.1170 against the euro. In early trade the pound hit it's fifth record low against the euro in succession. This time the magic number was 1.1124. One euro is now worth 89.5 pence, with seemingly more record lows lined up for the rest of the week.

Crude is slightly easier at $46.01/barrel on signs of falling Chinese fuel demand amid economic contractions in the U.S., Europe and Japan. It is however comfortably off Friday's lows after Pres. Bush announced that he is not prepared to let GM, Chrysler and Ford go to the wall. He will dip into the $700 billion TARP program funds if necessary, he said, in what appears to be a short-term measure to stave off bankruptcy before Obama gets the hot seat. OPEC meet at the end of the week to discuss exactly how big a production cut os needed to shore up the price of crude. Non-OPEC member Russia has indicated that it would also like to join the party.

Premier Foods has confirmed reports in the Sunday press that it is seeking up to 700 million pounds from investment banks and private equity groups.

The head of Barclays bank has predicted that economic gloom will deepen, with UK property prices falling by up to 30%.

Swedish company, Electrolux, the world's second biggest home appliance maker, is set to axe 3,000 jobs after warning it will miss full-year profits targets as demand for its goods in Europe and the US tumbled in November and December.

The FTSE100, CAC40 and DAX are all modestly higher in early trade with the FTSE up 0.65% to 4308.16.