Currencies

Currency has seen very little movement this week with no fresh news, meaning traders are back focussing on technical signals instead and moves within the ‘Fibonacci’ range. The Bank of England Monetary Policy Meeting on Thursday kept base rate at 0.1% with the aim to keep inflation for the UK economy at 2%. Unemployment rates fell for the first time since April and the number of furloughed jobs has declined faster than expected in more optimistic news on the UK recovery.

Wheat

The wheat markets started the week moving upwards on the continued weather stories although have ended the week moving lower. This has been taken as a sign that the market is overbought rather than anything fundamentally changing with the crop situation. The US remains too dry, as does Canada, but Europe is still too wet.

Russia has dropped their production forecast by 2 MlnT to 79 MlnT, as has Germany, dropping their projections by 1.8 MlnT down to 21 MlnT. Russia do seem to be on track with harvest despite the drop with 40% completed and 60% completed in Ukraine.

France are in real trouble with only 47% of their harvest complete compared to 87% on average for this time of year. There are reportedly 400,000 tonnes worth of vessels queued for loading at ports with only 100,000 tonnes of new crop wheat shipped so far. Despite this, overall EU production figures remain at 148.6 MlnT but the question is, what quality will this be?

The UK has started to cut in some dry parts of the country although data is still limited. Early indications suggest proteins are lower than last season. Prices for UK wheat are still around €9-10 too expensive to compete for export so if we do have an exportable surplus of high protein wheat, prices could come lower, however, if we have a surplus of feed wheat, so do Europe, so prices will likely stay static with plenty of room available in stores after last years low tonnages.

Soya

Soya has been on an overall downward trend with good growing conditions and crop ratings being improved by 2 points to 60% good/excellent. The Midwest where around 80% of the soya in the US is grown has adequate rain with no extreme heat forecast. There are concerns over the western belt growing regions being too hot but so far the market seems happy that the majority of the crop is okay. There has been a rise at the back end of the week with China re entering the market and also reports of low water levels in Argentina meaning that vessels are having to be short loaded in order to stay afloat. This ultimately makes the cost of freight far more expensive.

And Finally…
Milkman arrested by police who mistook him for a burglar because he was driving around so early.

A milkman was given an early morning wake up call after realising he was being followed by police at 5am on his round in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham this week.

The driver pulled over to explain and even opened his van to show the milk he was delivering but moments later he was then surrounded by another 3 police cars who removed him from the vehicle and arrested him. Despite trying to show them his delivery sheet he was told to stop trying to resist arrest.

A statement from the police says that officers were attending reports of a suspected burglary at a local shop where a man with a van were seen acting suspiciously. The delivery driver was later released without charge after being interviewed by officers.

Regards,
Kay Johnson & Martin Humphrey