Nogger's Blog

06/07/11 -- The overnight grains closed lower with beans and wheat down around 10 cents and corn easing 5-6 cents.

Global economy fears are back in the limelight with China raising base rates a quarter and Portugal having it's credit rating downgraded to "junk" by Moody's.

The Bank of Moscow has just required biggest bail-out in Russian history after a takeover bid uncovered toxic debts of USD9 billion on its books.

There is still a real danger of European debt sparking off a sub-prime domino effect causing financial meltdown around the world.

As we have painfully discovered before, you could forget the fundamentals of supply and demand in the grain markets if we were to witness a repetition of that.

Spec money continued to pour out of corn last week to the tune of 83,000 contracts, according to CFTC data yesterday. That's over 10 MMT in English, and adds to the similar sized volume of liquidation witnessed in the previous two weeks.

The USDA raised good/excellent crop condition ratings one percentage point for wheat, corn and soybeans last night.

The USDA have announced the sale of 120,000 MT old crop corn to Egypt and 225,000 MT of new crop corn sold to South Korea.

Reports are rife that China has bought more US corn over the past couple of days.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: wheat down 10-12c, beans down 8-10c, corn down 4-6c.