Nogger's Blog

22/11/11 -- The Globex grains were mostly a little higher with beans and wheat posting gains of around 1-2 cents and corn flat. Hardly what you would call a major reversal after last night's steep losses, and technically not a lot of help to the bulls.

Crude is up a bit, but well off early highs and global stock markets have also turned from green to red.

The market still has a bad case of the jitters and probably can't wait to take a day off for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

US economic growth has been revised down for Q3. Spain had to cough up a yield more than double what it was just last month in a three month debt auction and is now paying higher rates than Greece or Portugal.

The hole in MF Global's customer accounts is now pegged at USD1.2 billion, says the FT. That's almost a quarter of the client funds it was supposed to keep separate from it's own.

Ukraine has harvested a record 55.4 MMT grain crop and has stepped up it's export activities considerably in the past few weeks. Russia continues to ship grain like there's no tomorrow as prices fall, concerned that the government is going to pull the plug sometime in the spring.

They can't call time on exports soon enough for Kazakhstan who have a record grain crop of their own to dispose of and would very much like to have access to North Africa and the West via Russian ports on the Black Sea.

The wheat harvest in Australia is now in full swing, and despite exporting a record volume of the grain in the marketing year 2010/11 just ended in September, they still have plenty of carryover from last season's record crop to add to another bumper production year.

US wheat prices remain uncompetitive, despite recent falls, and the question now is not really if US exports will miss the USDA target but by how much.

South American weather doesn't look too threatening yet, can we actually go a who growing season without a weather scare there? It's early days yet, in Argentina soybean plantings are around halfway through with corn about 75% done.

We're looking at CBOT soybean and meal prices at their lowest since October 2010 and corn & wheat very close to their lows of the year. Is this a buying opportunity or time to throw in the towel? I have to confess that at this stage I'm not sure and could be persuaded to join either camp relatively easily.

There's no denying though that the momentum is downwards for the time being. I think I'd rather wait for the corner to be turned than predict what's around it right now.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: beans up 1-3 cents, corn & wheat mixed, 2 cents firmer to 2 cents weaker.