Lunchtime News Bites
10/07/13 -- Chinese customs data puts June soybean imports at 6.93 MMT, up 36% vs. May. They're gonna need to stay close to that level every month for the whole of 2013/14 if the USDA target of full season imports of 69 MMT is to be equalled.
Reuters say that the corn basis in Cedar Rapids is USD1.75 over CBOT futures as physically available corn in the US remains as tight as a shark's arse at 50 fathoms, a year ago it was 25 cents.
Algeria has bought 150 TMT of optional origin wheat (although French is usually their little favourite origin of choice) for September shipment. At least somebody likes the French.
South Korea has bought 120 TMT of optional origin corn at USD241.17 (around GBP162/tonne) delivered to it's very own doorstep in December.
Friday's CFTC report shows our old muckers, the hedge funds, selling the arse off everything in the grains sector bar Kansas wheat. As of last Tuesday they were net short of around 20k lots of CBOT corn (their biggest short in at least the last 12 months). They were also sitting on a net short of 50k in CBOT wheat, also their largest short in the past year. For beans they were long 111k (their smallest long in the preceding 12 months was 63k).
The Ukraine grain harvest is 41% done at 11.85 MMT. That includes 8.52 MMT of winter wheat, off 46% of the planned area, along with 2.57 MMT (90% of plan) of winter barley. Even the spring barley crop is 17% harvested at 578 TMT. They're also approaching halfway with the OSR harvest, which is 48% done producing 906 TMT.
The Russian government say that they will buy 6 MMT of this year's grain harvest to replenish depleted intervention stocks. They sold 15,938 MT of grains in today's intervention tender, bringing the total sold so far since sales began to 3.687 MMT.
FCStone say that the Polish wheat harvest will start next week.
The USDA's FAS office in India say that the 2013/14 wheat harvest will drop to 87 MMT, which is 5 MMT less than the USDA currently project, with exports falling to 5.0 MMT.
Oil World say that "Brazilian soybean exports likely to plunge in Sept/Dec 2013, raising global dependence on US supplies." I don't like Germans either.
My favourite German joke: Two German men are sitting in a pub. One turns to the other and says: "Last night I saw lots of strange men coming in and out of your Mum's house." The other man replies: "Yes, she has become a prostitute to subsidise her drug habit."
And remember kids, people that say it's never too late to tell somebody just how much you love them, have obviously never tried it after coming home drunk at 3 o'clock in the morning like I did last night.
