Morning Has Broken

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 09:22 | Categorized as

16/12/11 -- There's not a great deal to inspire this morning. Soybeans seem to have managed to maintain a bit of upwards momentum carried over from last night and currently stand around 5-6 cents firmer in overnight trade. Wheat and corn didn't have any momentum yesterday and neither do they so far this morning with both trading around unchanged.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have increased their production and export estimates for wheat and rapeseed. They've upped their wheat production estimate by 1.1 MMT to 25.3 MMT and increased exports from 17.0 MMT to 17.2 MMT. The rapeseed crop there is now seen at 14.2 MMT from 12.9 MMT previously, with exports rising from 7.1 MMT to 8.0 MMT.

The President of the Russian National Union of Grain Producers says that the country had a 98 MMT in bunker weight grain harvest, or 92 MMT in clean weight. That matches SovEcon's assessment of things released yesterday. Wheat production is seen at 56 MMT by the former and 56.5 MMT by the latter.

Winter wheat has been sown on 16.5 million hectares in Russia and crop conditions are said to be quite favourable with no significant losses of winter crops expected.

Not so in Ukraine where the Ag Minister says 2.3-3.0 million hectares will need replanting in the spring.

Fitch have downgraded six of the world's largest banks including Golden Sacks and our very own Barclays I read on the Beeb this morning: Slash

France's official statistics agency says that it expects the country to be shown to be in recession now and in Q1 of 2012.

S&P's have downgraded ten Spanish banks and the head of the IMF has likened the current situation to the Great Depression of the 30's.

Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, is the latest frog to chuck in his unwanted two-europenneth and simultaneously eject more toys out of the pram saying that the markets should "start by downgrading Britain" - the ponce.

There's a French bloke lives down the road from me. He was out at the weekend creosoting the fence, and then I walked past this morning and he's out there doing it all again. I said "hey mate, you've only just done that last week, you don't need to do it all again that stuff lasts for a good few years." To which he replied "non monsieure, we French, we always like to retreat as soon as possible."