Friday, September 14, 2007

Market slices,Crisis in Prices: Wheat

Mr. Murdoch, I gotta go cold turkey, no more Post.
Maybe after I clean up I'll be able to handle the Times (de Londres),
they say Oxonian isn't as addictive as NYU'ese.
For now though, I have to save myself.

From Inside Futures:

Wheat: The long awaited correction in Chicago Wheat futures has begun, after the buy the rumor, sell the fact decline in prices after Wednesday’s USDA crop production and supply/demand report. Since reaching an all-time high of $9.11 ¼ on Wednesday, December Wheat has fallen as low as $8.28 in early trade this morning. Traders will be eagerly awaiting the crop estimate by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics on September 18th, for the official estimate of the Australian Wheat crop. The USDA estimated the Australian Wheat crop at 21 million metric tons, down from 23 million metric tons in the August estimate. However some private forecasters are calling for a crop as low as 12 million metric tons. At the end of the overnight session, December Wheat is trading at $8.36 ¼, down 8 ¾ cents.

From the Globe and Mail:

What pasta strike?
If there was a pasta strike yesterday, I certainly wasn't aware of it. Italian consumer groups had called for a one-day pasta-buying strike to protest the surging prices of Italy's favourite food. But pasta was still flying off the shelves at the tiny Roman supermarket where I shop. Trattoria patrons were still gobbling it up.

That's just it -- Italians can't do without pasta any more than cinema buffs can do without popcorn. The average Italian eats pasta at least once a day. A survey said 50 per cent of Italian would rather eat pasta than have sex. "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti," Sophia Loren once said about her voluptuous figure....MORE


From Dow Jones via FX Street:
US Wheat Outlook: 6-8c Lower On Follow-Through Liquidation

U.S. wheat futures are expected to start Friday's daysession lower on follow-through long liquidation and profit-taking as themarkets extend their setback from record highs, analysts said.

Wheat futures are called to open 6 to 8 cents per bushel lower. In e-cbotovernight trading, Chicago Board of Trade December wheat tumbled 8 3/4 cents to$8.38 1/4.

Profit-taking and technical selling have dragged wheat futures to lowercloses for the past two day sessions. Prices slipped Wednesday even though theU.S. Department of Agriculture announced the strongest weekly export sales inmore than a decade.

The sell-off in the face of bullish news was "a bearish clue that all thebullish news has been factored into wheat futures prices," a technical analystsaid. "Bulls are fading."...MORE>


And back to the G & M:

Is it too late to stop the ethanol con job?

ROME — Not so long ago, you could feel complacent - smug even - about your little greenish exertions. You traded your SUV for a smaller set of wheels. You bought compact florescent bulbs and dragged the old push mower out of storage. You approved of ethanol and other biofuels and vowed to buy them whenever possible. Okay, there wasn't a lot of sacrifice involved. But you could feel a tad superior to your fossil-fuel-slurping neighbours.

You might feel a little less smug today. You might even feel guilty. Why? Because biofuels aren't living up to their hype. By now, it's obvious they won't cure the planet of its oil addiction or take the edge off global warming - two of the alleged advantages touted by the biofuel industry. Biofuels may even be harming the planet.

The oil industry was never keen on biofuels, but you never believed the oil industry. Now no less a sober authority than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says biofuels - notably ethanol, a fuel worshipped by governments, farmers and refiners in Canada, the United States and parts of Europe - might be a con job on a massive scale....MORE>