Currencies

Currency remained unchanged this week at $1.34 and €1.20 despite the optimistic news that the Bank of England MPC voted to raise interest rates to 0.5%.

The ongoing ‘party gate’ and possible vote of no confidence against the Prime minister will unfortunately keep the £ in check for the time being.

Wheat

Wheat remains volatile, (although more on a short term downward trend), and bouncing between its Fibonacci range on the technical graphs. Fundamentally nothing has changed with old crop but the market is watching the situation between Russia and Ukraine carefully.

Historically, wheat markets have only really rallied after the Russian Parliament have voted to engage troops across borders so for now, we are stuck in this no mans land. Interestingly as well, CBOT funds are still short of old crop wheat contracts.

Old crop wheat will continue to find support from the strengthening maize market. It has to keep a certain premium over maize prices or else there will be more interest in wheat which will then likely push prices higher still.

Looking at new crop, Europe and the Black Sea are reporting good early signs although crops could be exposed if we see any late cold snaps during February. In North America, winter wheat does not seem to be showing and effect from the current dry weather but it is early days.

UK farmers are also reporting a good start to the season but as mentioned before, the continued increase in fertiliser and Ag Chemical prices means that crop projections are going to be capped for the coming season.

Soya

Soya markets remain extremely sensitive to any crop numbers and weather reports. Argentina is still dry and this week crop numbers were downgraded to 130 MlnT for Brazil, down from 139 MlnT, and 42 MlnT for Argentina, down from 46.5 MlnT.

The issue is that the range of data now between the main agencies varies by around 10 MlnT for Brazil and 5 MlnT for Argentina. This proves that until we start to see some physical crop data come through at harvest, we cannot be sure of which direction the market will go longer term.

Veg oil markets have seen strong support this week from both curbs in palm oil exports by the Malaysian government and crude oil, which has reached $90 a barrel for the first time since 2014, again, on the back of Russia and Ukraine.

And Finally…

Clever orcas are learning how to steal fish from fisheries

Scientists who have been studying the whales off the coats off the Cozet Islands have determined that the whales are stealing the fish and then teaching younger animals how to dot it as well!

Studying the pod, they also now believe the orcas have been communicating to other pods as the number has grown from 17 animals up to 34, proving that their intellectual capabilities to share knowledge outside of their own pod.

Regards,
Kay Johnson & Martin Humphrey