Blimey!
25/05/11 -- Been running round like one of these this morning. Just for future reference, if anyone is interested, the little John Inman "I'm free" ad on the right there is a reference to availability not price FFS!Now, what's going on? London wheat is a bit firmer I see, although sterling strength against the euro may limit those gains. Paris wheat, rape and corn are all up around EUR2.00/tonne with the weak euro underpinning those.
The overnight Globex market sees wheat up around 4-6c, corn up 2-3c and soybeans 6-9c firmer. Crude is a tad weaker.
There's a three day weekend coming up for the Septics as well as us Brits, it's Memorial Day on Monday over there, so we could have a bit of a book-squaring couple of days ahead.
The weather outlook hasn't changed a great deal. Over here there's chances of light rain for the SE tomorrow. Also prospects of similar in France and Germany. A drought buster it isn't with only a trace to 0.25 inches in France and 0.1-0.35 inches in Germany over the next five days, according to QT Weather.
My man in Moscow tells me that Russian traders say that there are still large volumes of grain in store over there, almost to the point of there being little free space for the coming harvest.
Crops in the south are looking "not bad" he says. SovEcon would seem to agree, they've upped their grain harvest estimate to 85 MMT, a 40% rebound from last year. Debate still abounds over when Moscow will allow exports to resume. It is a "when" rather than an "if" though.
It also seems to be true that there are surprisingly large volumes of the 2010 crop still left to market as the export ban depressed local prices to way below international levels.
With global prices where they are at the moment all that would point to Russian traders coming out as very aggressive marketeers the minute the export floodgates are opened.
That could have a swift and immediate impact on prices, especially is Ukraine and maybe even India too are already out there pitching.
