Nogger's Blog

15/04/11 -- The overnight grains closed mostly lower with wheat down around 2-4c and corn & beans both 5-7c easier. Crude oil is also lower. Goldman Sachs issued another "it's time to reduce your commodity longs" rallying call, the second in a week.

"The morning satellite image shows a violent storm in the United States midsection. Snow is developing in North Dakota. Northwest Kansas has a blizzard warning for 3-7 inches of snow today. Kansas has another chance for rain next week in a new developing storm," say Martell Crop Projections.

That should be beneficial for HRW wheat, although not so kind for early plantings of spring wheat and corn further north and also across the border into Canada.

Inflation in China is now running at 5.4% prompting fears of waning demand for commodities in general. That said, they've just been confirmed as buying 165,000 MT of new crop US soybeans this afternoon.

Bean production in South America keeps creeping higher. The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange upped their estimate for Argentine soybean output from 48.8 MMT to 49.2 MMT yesterday. They also increased their corn production estimate by 0.5 MMT to 20 MMT.

Including the overnight price action we now see May beans down 67 1/4c, May corn down 21 1/2c and May CBOT wheat down 61c on the week so far.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn and beans seen 5-7c lower with wheat down 2-4c.