News Snippets

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 16:14 | Categorized as

08/03/12 -- The USDA reported weekly export sales of a combined 578,100 MT for wheat, a bit better than the 300 to 500 thousand MT expected. For corn they gave us a combined 505,700 MT, at the low end of expectations of 500 to 700 thousand MT. Soybean sales were the real star with 1,015,200 MT of old crop and 630,800 MT of new crop, far higher than the expected 400 to 700 thousand MT.

The FAO forecast the 2012/13 global wheat crop at 690 MMT down 10 MMT from 2011.

CONAB forecast the Brazilian soybean crop at 68.75 MMT versus the previous estimate of 69.23 MMT. They peg the corn crop at 61.69 MMT, which is actually an increase on their previous estimate of 60.83 MMT.

They say that 35.89 MMT of that will come from the now being harvested summer crop and 25.8 MMT from the now being planted "safrinha" corn. So that's almost 42% coming from 2nd crop corn this season.

The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange estimate Argentina’s 2011/12 corn crop at 20.8 MMT versus the previous estimate of 21.3 MMT.

Egypt's GASC has bought 60 TMT US SRW wheat for April shipment. they also report 165,000 MT of new crop soybeans sold to China and 106,680 MT of old crop corn sold to Japan.

Both the BoE and ECB left interest rates on hold today, as was widely expected.

The Greek government is making all the right reassuring noises that enough bondholders will commit to the debt swap to enable them to get their next bailout. Confirmation is due first thing in the morning.