Nogger's Blog

14/02/11 -- It's Valentine's Day, another chance for retailers to attempt to wring a few quid more out of us. As it happened I had to go into Adsa yesterday and was dismayed to see thousands of identical bunches of a dozen red roses carefully placed next to a pallet of giant toblerones. That's the way to show your woman how much she means to you, you old romantic. Still I suppose that it's one tiny step up from the Esso station on the way home option.

Talking of romance MrsN#3 keeps hinting about wanting a "large rock" and a long engagement. She does unfortunately read this blog, and so is fully aware of the MrsN#1 and the cubic zircona ruse, so that particular avenue of deception is closed to me. So it's best not to disappoint her and play safe by getting her nothing again this year methinks in a lone protest against rampant consumerism.

London wheat has opened higher, with May coming in up GBP3 to GBP213.50, just GBP0.50 shy of last week's all time contract high. A close above GBP212.75 would be a record high close for the contract.

Paris wheat is also higher, coming in around EUR3-4/tonne firmer on spillover support from Globex wheat which currently stands around 12-14c firmer.

Mexico's corn crop may have been damaged by unusually cold temperatures bringing frost to "up to" 1.5 million acres of the crop in the north of the country. That's one of the reasons behind this morning's excitement. The corn could be replanted, but we're ignoring that bit for now.

We've also got the old chestnuts of drought in China and concerns over US wheat on the Plains. Plus the market seems to feel that with Mubarak out of the way things will regain some degree of normality in Egypt. It probably won't mean them buying any more wheat, but we're ignoring that bit as well.

At least the Suez Canal isn't under threat of closure, that's a bonus, although to be fair that is bearish for oil not bullish. NYMEX Crude has slid to USD85.49/barrel currently, within a smidge of it's lowest since November, so we'd better ignore that bit too.

Egypt bought Canadian, Australian and US wheat on Friday, passing over on French wheat which was too dear. Ignore.

For now the European market seems almost relieved to be missing Egypt's business, availability is after all tighter than a shark's arse at fifty fathoms isn't it? Canadian wheat was USD20/tonne cheaper (before freight) than French wheat on Friday. Australian wheat meanwhile was more than USD33/tonne cheaper and US wheat was USD24/tonne less. Ignore.

By my calculations we need to average sales of 419,000 MT/week to hit the USDA's projected 21.5 MMT for the current marketing year. We've only beat that weekly total once since Christmas. Ignore.