Quiet Day In Store?
25/03/11 -- It looks like we're in for another quiet one, with the overnight Globex market not up to much so far this morning.Corn is a bit higher on old crop on rumours that China bought wheat by mistake yesterday. Do you know what the word wheat looks like in Chinese? It looks like this: 小麦 and corn looks like this: 玉米 (OK, it looks like they don't come out properly in the published version, so you are just going to have to trust me that they DO look pretty similar).
They're pretty similar so it was probably an easy mistake to make, especially if they didn't have their glasses on.
The pound has the friendless look of a ginger-haired stepson again at 1.6075 against the dollar and 1.1350 against the euro, we haven't been below 1.13 since late October, and then only briefly.
A poor set of retail sales numbers for February is the culprit. A stumbling "recovery" makes the chance of an interest rate rise less likely. The BoE now have the tricky job of keeping rising inflation under control whilst watching the retail sector cooling off at a rapid pace.
A weak pound should see London wheat open firmer, but that won't do anything to improve physical demand.