Nogger's Blog

26/01/12 -- The overnight grains are higher in follow through trade and in response to a sharply weaker US dollar. Comments from the Fed last night that US interest rates would remain very low until the end of 2014 sent the dollar tumbling. The pound currently stands close to it's best levels since November at 1.5700 against the greenback, to where it has steadily risen from a low of 1.5230 a fortnight ago.

Fund money is coming back in for CBOT corn in particular, they bought an estimated 8,000 contracts last night. That's the fifth session in a row they've been net buyers adding what's thought to be 47,000 lots to their building net long.

Greece say that they hope to have a deal sorted by the weekend on private debt. Yawn. If it can sort something out it wants to know can the IMF/EU/ECB have the money in it's account by Monday morning.

The UK may or may not be in a recession, and that's official. Unofficially, we are.

Fresh news is thin on the ground as you can see. Short term we seem to be going up, although I for one am far from convinced about the longevity of such a move. Sellers have spotted this trend and don't want to sell. Buyers don't like the look of these levels and generally don't want to buy, at least not unless they have to.

It will be interesting to see what volume of export licences were granted by Brussels for the latest week ended Tuesday when they come out later today. The first three weeks of 2012 have been very uninspiring at 107,000 MT; 167,000 MT and 175,000 MT. That hardly paints a picture of rampant demand for EU wheat.

Year-to-date EU soft wheat exports total 7.7 MMT so far, a 36% decrease on where we were this time last year despite a larger crop this time round.