The Early Vibe

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 08:38 | Categorized as

20/06/11 -- The overnight grains are mostly a little lower with front month July corn falling under USD7/bushel this morning, it hasn't closed under that level for a month. As well as reduced offtake from ethanol producers there's now some talk of US pig producers cutting herd numbers with corn at these levels.

Will we see more corn liquidation this week? Certainly at the very least we could see July coming under more pressure as funds roll their positions.

Widespread rain across the UK, France and Germany over the weekend may mean that we do get a wheat crop after all. That could see European grains under a bit more pressure when the markets open here this morning.

Crude oil is already the best part of USD2 lower on NYMEX, and now not that far away from breaking through the USD90 mark at USD91.22/barrel.

The Greek tragedy rumbles on. "Eurozone finance ministers said they expected Greece to get EUR12bn in emergency loans by mid-July, but made no firm commitment – until the country makes more progress on austerity measures aimed at sorting out its problems," says Agrimony.com this morning.

China's totally unbiased People's Daily says that despite a severe drought the country's top wheat producing state of Henan province will have a higher output than last year for the ninth year running. Give yourselves a little magical pat on the back Henan.

Down the road in China's second largest wheat producing province of Shandong they also report an increase on last year. And you're never going to guess what the state of play is in Hebei and Anhui, the third and fourth largest producing provinces. Go on, it's only a bit of fun. Higher or lower than a two? Yes, that's right the state-run Farmer's Daily is delighted to report wheat production increasing there too.

I'm banned over there you know.

Saudi Arabia has bought 360,000 MT of US/EU wheat over the weekend at an unspecified price and with no clear indication on how the order was split.

Heavy rainfall covered a large part of Ukraine over the weekend, and crop conditions are now looking "very favourable" according to Agritel.

That's the early scores on the doors this sunny Monday morning boys and girls. This week we're going to be playing with Merlin's balls, as chosen by Frank and Doris from Steeple Bumpstead....