Nogger's Blog

30/04/12 -- The overnight grains saw a bit of consolidation from Friday's gains with soybeans 210 cents lower on old crop and 3-5 cents easier on old crop. Wheat ended 4-9 cents weaker and corn was mixed. Crude oil is also lower.

As will as consolidation/profit-taking following Friday's advances, we may also be in for a bit of month-end book squaring too, although fundamentally nothing has changed.

Ag Rural have lowered their Brazilian soybean production estimate a little to 66.24 MMT.

Eastern European weather is seen turning cooler and wetter in the second half of the week, which may ease heat and dryness concerns there. There are no such problems in Western Europe after another cool and very wet weekend for many.

US corn plantings are expected to have advanced to 40-45% done as of Sunday night, which the USDA will report upon after the close.

A mentioned earlier, last week was all about corn, it remains to be seen if the USDA are done with announcing any further sales to China or unknown. They have however this afternoon announced 220,000 MT of new crop soybean sales to China.

Fifteen dollar soybeans clearly aren't putting them off too much with their domestic levels around USD4/bu more expensive.

Saudi Arabia bought a mixture of US, EU, Australian, Canadian and Argy wheat over the weekend in a 450,000 MT purchase.

Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn up 1-2 cents, wheat down 7-9 cents, soybeans down 6-8 cents,