News At Ten

04/11/10 -- The word on the streets is that the Ukraine government hadn't received one bid for any of it's newly introduced export licences as of yesterday morning. Nobody appears to have a clue about exactly what they are bidding for entitles them to. Meanwhile chaos reigns, there certainly appears to be some kind of unofficial ban now on sunflower exports too, and rumours circulate of similar problems on rapeseed.

The Russian Ministry say that they've harvested 43.2 MMT of wheat this year, along with 8.8 MMT of barley. The corn harvest is ongoing and has produced 2.7 MMT so far, they say. So too is the sunflower harvest, which has produced 4.7 MMT to date, they add.

The Fed announced a USD600 billion QE package last night at the rate of around USD75 billion/month. That has propelled the pound to a nine month high against the dollar this morning, hitting 1.62 for the first time since January.

The overnight grains are all sharply higher on the back of the weak dollar, with beans currently around 20-25c higher, wheat up 8-10c and corn up 6-7c.

Malaysian palm oil futures have hit a fresh 27 month high overnight in Kuala Lumpur.