Morning Muse

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 09:31 | Categorized as

15/12/10 -- We've had turnaround Tuesday, today is shaping up like apathetic Wednesday so far, with very little fresh news to get excited about.

The overnight grains aren't doing much, and already the market has a kind of half knocked off for Christmas feel. Which sounds like a good excuse to go Christmas shopping to me, which is exactly what I'm going to do shortly.

Before that a quick look around tells me that beans are 3-4c higher on the overnight Globex market, with corn flat to down 1c and wheat up one/down one. Front month on corn and wheat is now March as December expired yesterday.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of change on the currency front either with the pound hovering around 1.18 against the euro and 1.5730 against the dollar.

Iraq is tendering to buy at least 100,000 MT of any origin wheat. Egypt are also back in the market for assorted origin wheat.

China only sold 21% of the wheat on offer at it's regular weekly auction, but at least that was better subscribed than this week's corn and soybean tenders. They now plan to attempt to auction off the same soybeans that nobody wanted on Tuesday on Friday.

China says that the north of the country, where a significant portion of the nation's winter wheat is grown, is suffering from "moderate" drought.

As the harvest in Western Australia winds down, things are speeding up in the east as the heaviest showers die away and things warm up.

The Australian Oilseeds Federation pegs this season's rapeseed crop at 2.1 MMT, up 10.5% from 1.9 MMT last year, but says that up to 14% of that may not be suitable for crushing due to rain damage, according to a report on Bloomberg.

Ratings agency Moody's say that they may cut Spain's Aa1 credit rating later today. Haven't they made their mind up yet? Do they just call a meeting with a few sarnies and take a show of hands on it?

Other stories of interest that you might have missed from yesterday:

South Korea bought four cargoes of Indian/South American soymeal, US origin was too expensive.

Pirates attack an Italian-owned grain vessel off the Gulf of Oman Link

German biodiesel producer EOP declares insolvency Link