Nogger's Blog

15/03/11 -- Lordy, Lordy, and my oh my. Mar London wheat closed GBP11.00/tonne lower at GBP167.35/tonne, with new crop Nov down GBP6.00/tonne to GBP145.00/tonne. May Paris wheat fell EUR13.75/tonne to EUR203.00/tonne, with Nov declining EUR12.00/tonne to EUR187.75/tonne.

Any bullish news is now being totally ignored as the widely-feared, but much discounted, stampede for the exit door becomes a mass exodus. The market had apparently become so convinced of it's total invincibility that it knew for sure that "this time it was going to be different" - except it wasn't.

The Japanese situation has everyone scratching their heads and searching for comparisons. Unfortunately there aren't any, Chernobyl in 1986 was very different in my opinion.

There are still plenty of opinions around that the current situation is actually profoundly bullish, not bearish. Unfortunately those opinions are based on market fundamentals, and sadly we haven't been trading on those for some considerable time.

The levels that we are, or were at, didn't have a great deal to do with reality. They were "reality" from the perspective of so-called "smart" fund investment money.

That clever money now wants out. Indeed some of that cash may have been in the form of Japanese fund money which suddenly has much more pressing matters to attend to. Those outflows take precedent over market fundamentals.

Defra today said that the UK had exported 2.1 MMT of wheat up until the end of January in the current marketing year, even though they only have us down to export 1.3 MMT in the entire 2010/11 marketing year.

Based on that information you wouldn't really have expected wheat to close GBP11 lower would you? Especially not with the pound dipping below 1.15 against the euro for the first time since early November.