Nogger's Blog

09/03/12 -- Hurrah! Greece gets a more than 75% agreement from its bondholders to take a "voluntary" 53.5% haircut. So that's that all sorted done & dusted and we can forget about it then?

Erm, not quite. Booooo! As ever the devil is in the detail.

The Greek government have said that they now plan to implement the so-called collective action clauses (CACs) which will force those investors who refused to sign up to exchange their debt anyway.

However, apparently not all these bonds are governed by Greek law, some of them are subject to international law it would seem. Of the latter only 69% of bondholders accepted the deal, so Greece has now extended the deadline for them to agree to the debt swap by another fourteen days.

We now also need to see if the ratings agencies see this enforced haircut to be a selective default anyway. S&P's cut Greece's rating to "selective default" at the end of February so it's quite likely that others will now do the same I'd say.

Meanwhile Australia's Bureau of Statistics say that the nation exported 22% more wheat than last year in January at 2.14 MMT. That brings the 2011/12 YTD total (starting Oct 2011) to 7.1 MMT, a 28% increase on last season.

Rabobank yesterday pegged Australia's wheat exports in 2011/12 at a record 21.2 MMT, 14% up on last season.

Now we sit and wait for the USDA, with the trade seemingly very confident of a bullish report for soybeans, fairly confident for corn and mildly optimistic for wheat. What could possibly go wrong?

As a recap here is what the market is expecting.

US ending stocks: Corn 785m bu (from 801m last month); soybeans 260m (275m); wheat 836m (845m).

Argentina: Corn 21.25 MMT (22.0 MMT); Soybeans 46.8 MMT (48 MMT).

Brazil: Corn 60.2 MMT (61 MMT); Soybeans 69.3 MMT (72.0 MMT).

World ending stocks: Corn 123.5 MMT (125.35 MMT); Soybeans 57.8 MMT (60.3 MMT); Wheat 212.6 MMT (213.1 MMT).