EU Wheat Edges Higher

EU wheat futures continued to confound the bears ending slightly higher Wednesday with London November feed wheat up GBP0.40/tonne at GBP105.25/tonne, and Paris January milling wheat EUR1.50 at EUR131.00/tonne.

EU markets basically followed US futures higher despite a weak dollar further knocking the competitiveness of European grain. A weak sterling helped London wheat somewhat however, following comments from Bank of England governor Mervyn King that a weak sterling would help the UK economy.

His comments come just over 24 hours after Fitch Ratings warned that the UK was the most likely of the G10 nations to lose it's AAA sovereign credit rating.

Fund money seems to be flowing back into US commodities, pushing prices higher despite them being in the midst of corn and soybean harvesting. Data from the USDA yesterday seems to confirm that production losses have so far been minimal, despite a wet finish to their season.

The Russian grain harvest now stands at 101.4 MMT in bunker weight, according to the Ag Ministry, of that 63.4 MMT is wheat and 18.7 MMT barley. That is only marginally down on last season, and significantly higher than summer estimates.

Egypt are back in the market tendering for two cargoes of wheat, last week's order was split 50:50 between Russian and French origin grain. Jordan are also shopping for 100,000 MT of wheat.