Nogger's Blog

01/06/12 -- Hurrah! It's flaming June, and we kick the whole month off with a long leisurely, sun-baked weekend. God bless you Ma'am. Except it's going to rain. And there's work to be done, the sort of work that you can only do on a long weekend when the phones aren't ringing. Still, I will get to walk Chummy the Wonder Dog past some nice fields of local wheat, barley and rape and might take a few piccies and post them up at some point. I think I know what I am going to find after a week of sunshine and warmth followed by a couple of days of steady rain.

It's noticeable that there's more winter barley round here this year. A lot more. Getting parity with wheat, or even a premium at times this season has obviously captured a bit of interest. It may therefore be that the new big hungry Saltend wheat monster (think along the lines of the Honey Monster except not as cute - this one has Roman Abramovich for it's Dad, Imelda Marcos for it's Mum and Bernie Eccleston as it's ever so slightly weird "Uncle" that's often found hanging around outside Mum's bedroom) may not be getting quite as much of it's feedstock from North Yorkshire as we might have thought. Not this year at any rate.

Whilst the Middlesboro wheat monster (not so well parented, the product of drunken night out where John Terry "copped of" with Barbra Cartland) appears to be stuck in some sort of coma, crude oil is completely falling out of bed. Brent and NYMEX are starting June where they finished May, in a terminal decline with the former already down more than USD1.50/barrel this morning and the latter not far behind.

A crappy US jobs report, plus US crude stocks rising 2.2 million barrels to the highest levels in nearly 22 years yesterday saw NYMEX crude finish the month of May nearly 18% lower than it began it last night. Brent meanwhile suffered its biggest monthly loss since 2008 in May.

I wonder what the monster's respective parents are thinking right now given that their copulation probably took place before much of the extreme volatility on the commodity markets that we have witnessed in recent years took place: "Pass me that fag packet. Look, feed wheat is always GBP100/tonne, give or take...."