Nogger's Blog

07/06/12 -- The electronic market sees beans 4-5 cents higher, corn narrowly mixed and wheat 2-3 cents weaker at 9am. The pound is a tad weaker against both the euro and the US dollar. There's plenty of talk, but so far little action, on further QE measures from Europe and the US. Exactly why the market should think that when QEI and QEII both sank, we should launch QEIII and that will make all the difference is unclear.

China sold less than 14,000 MT of the 600,000 MT of crappy old soybeans that it put up for auction this week. No surprises there, these things were older than Lenny Henry's act - although probably considerably funnier.

"In the coming week up to 25 mm of rain is forecast for cropping areas of Western Australia. The rain should provide much needed moisture for the germination of recently sown winter crops," say ABARES.

A report on Bloomberg today quotes the CEO of Russia's RZ Agro Holding Ltd as saying that the south of the country doesn't need an more rain (!!), as that could harm quality at the current stage of the wheat crop's development. They are forecasting a Russian wheat crop of 54 MMT, in line with yesterday's estimate from the USDA's Moscow attaché, 2.2 MMT down on last year's output.

The Ukraine Ministry say that the spring grain planted area is up 17% on last year due to the replanting of winter losses. The total grain planted area is unchanged on last year at 15.9 million hectares. If Mother Nature assists then they could easily beat last season's record corn crop of 22.8 MMT (the current USDA estimate is 24 MMT but 25-26 MMT could be on the cards if the weather plays ball methinks).

The CME's new Black Sea wheat contract began trading yesterday, closing up USD9.50/tonne with three lots traded all day. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. That's what me Nan used to say. Although to my knowledge she never caught a monkey all her life. Many a mickle makes a muckle, that was another piece of useful advice that I quickly found invaluable growing up on the streets of Toxteth. It was awash with monkeys and mickles round there in them days, not like now. You could go out and leave your back door open all day long too then. Of course all your stuff would have been nicked by the time you got home, but we were happy and you could soon replace it with the help of a couple of monkeys. "How much for that three piece suite mate, ours has just been nicked?" "A monkey, squire." "A monkey, you're havin a laugh, I'll give you two muckles and half a mickle, top whack, and I'm doing myself at that." "Oh, go on then." "Right, come on you two monkeys, to me, to you....this looks just like our old one doesn't it...."