Nogger's Blog

18/11/13 -- The overnight Globex grains see corn extending its losses, down 2-3 cents, with wheat up 1-2 cents and soybeans flat to up 3 cents. I was going to say with "corn extending its recent losses" but a glance at the weekly chart for Dec 13 shows it has in fact been in a downwards trend for over a year now. You could have sold Dec 13 corn short at $6.60 last July and now its below $4.20 for a loss of over 36 percent.

The magnitude of losses in soybeans and meal on Friday night was something of a surprise, as the much-anticipated EPA announcement of the proposed reduction in the biofuel mandate was surely more about demand for corn than beans? Maybe the fact that the proposal was so widely expected means that the bearish news for corn was already factored in? That still doesn't explain the steep decline in beans and meal though, especially given the very strong demand for both that has been witnessed in recent months.

Does that mean that beans and meal are a buy? Probably, yes. At least for the Nov/Jan position, I'd say.

Watching the news last night (a headline on Twitter this morning "Deadly Tornadoes Hit US Midwest" was wrongly read by a still half asleep me as "Deadly Tomatoes Hit US Midwest"), I wondered if that might have much effect on the market this morning, but it would seem not. The US harvest should be pretty much over for corn and beans. Last week the USDA said that the corn harvest was 84% complete and the bean harvest 91% done, I guess we can expect figures of around 90% and 95% in tonight's crop progress update.

Following last week's wheat purchase, Egypt says that it now has enough wheat bought to last it until the beginning of March - they normally begin their own wheat harvest in April.

Lebanon are tendering for 20 TMT of wheat, having bought a similar volume of Romanian origin wheat late last week. Incidentally I was in Durham over the weekend, and the Big Issue seller there is a Romanian gypsy. She's a sizable "lady" - one who I think it's fair to say collided with all the branches of the ugly tree on the way down, and then decided to climb back up to the top and enjoy the experience all over again. Anyway, she cornered me and said in a rather threatening tone "Big Issue" - I don't think she got my witty Scouse humour when I immediately replied "Bless you" and sauntered off on my way. It made my day anyway even it it did nothing to brighten hers up.

The Russian harvest is now 93.9% done at 93.3 MMT as of Friday. Has anyone else noticed that these two numbers are converging? I think that they've already decided that they will announce a 100 MMT harvest this year. Wheat accounts for 53.9 MMT off 97.8% of the plan, and barley 16.3 MMT off 95.2% of plan. The corn harvest is 67% done at 8.6 MMT and they've also harvested 76.4% of the sunflower crop, producing 8.7 MMT to date.

Russian winter grain plantings seem to have stalled at around the 14.4 million hectare mark, some 2 million less than they would have liked.

South Korea have bought 47,200 MT of US milling wheat for March shipment in a tender.