Nogger's Blog

11/07/11 -- The overnight Globex market is trading mostly lower with wheat down around 13-15 cents, and with corn and beans around 4-6 cents easier. Crude oil is more than a dollar weaker and the USD is firmer.

News over the weekend that Chinese inflation reached a three year high in June makes another interest rate rise there seem likely.

Also causing global economic unease is the slowest car crash in the world, the potential break-up of the euro.

A report ion the FT over the weekend apparently said that EU ministers would now consider a "selective default" by Greece.

An emergency meeting of top officials dealing with the euro zone debt crisis has been called for today as fears now grow that Italy (the third largest economy in the eurozone) is about to be sucked into the mire.

This gigantic house of cards has sub-prime written all over it if you ask me.

Unease may continue ahead of the results of stress tests on European banks scheduled for released on Friday. How many toxic debts masquerading as "assets" are these guys holding, and when will the truth emerge?

The Bank of Moscow has just been discovered to have toxic debts of USD9 billion hidden within it's books, necessitating the biggest bail-out in Russian history. And that could be just the tip of a very large iceberg.

It's not surprising that spec/fund money continues to exit the market. Bloomberg report that "speculators reduced their net-long position in 11 US farm goods by 6.6 percent to 564,174 futures and options contracts in the week ended July 5."

That's the lowest in a year, with corn being particularly badly hit for the third straight week.

Nov London wheat is down GBP2.75/tonne in early trade, with it's Parisian counterpart falling EUR2.50/tonne.