The Morning Buzz
08/05/13 -- Twitter is alight with the breaking news that Sir Alex Ferguson is to retire at the end of the season, and my own beloved (which is what David means incidentally) David Moyes "odds on" to succeed him, according to a report on the Beeb this morning. In actual fact when the news broke it was looking like a very close two horse race between Moysey and The Chosen One, Jose Mourinho, according to the bookies - with the latter generally the slight favourite with most of them around evens and with Moyes at 6/4 ish, although it now looks like Moyes is indeed set to make the short journey down the M62. Here's a link to view the latest fluctuating odds if you're interested ManUre Manager. Sky are apparently reporting that the identity of the new manager will be confirmed within the next 48 hours.
It's nice to see the peoples favourite 'Arry Redknapp get a look in, with a quote of 66/1, although I'm sure that wild horses couldn't drag him away from the glamour of away games at Barnsley and Doncaster next season. "I'd like to stay and help at QPR, you know I would, but me daughter lives in Wilmslow and I am a big family man, you can't blame me for that. What time's the next train?"
Back to the boring business stuff. A stimulating Twitter debate was generated by Oil World's assertion last week that the UK OSR crop would come in at 2.3 MMT this year. They must have got wind that this was about as likely as Stuart Hall getting a knighthood with a swift downgrade to 1.8-1.9 MMT yesterday. Even so, this still looks a tall order judged by the area of winter rape that never made it. Judged by the emails and tweets I've received in the past 24 hours 1.25-1.70 MMT is the range that those who should be in the know are expecting this year.
Across the pond, I'm still not entirely convinced that the US wheat crop is done for just yet. The late development of the crop may yet turn out to be it's saviour, preventing too much freeze damage and holding out for rain, should it finally come. Note that last week's Kansas wheat tour threw up better potential yields than the market was expecting. This morning I hear from Martell Crop Projections that a life giving rain event is indeed on the way for the Great Plains.
"A new weather disturbance is getting organized in the Great Plains today promising generous rainfall for hard red winter wheat. Strong thunderstorms may spawn tornadoes. The disturbance in the central Great Plains is a slow-mover (nice), promising to produce very generous rainfall in hard red winter wheat (lovely).
"Kansas is expecting at least one inch of rainfall, but up to 2 inches in scattered strong thunderstorms. Oklahoma also has a very wet forecast in a stalled trough of low pressure. Rains would be highly beneficial for wheat jointing and moving into the grain filling stage," they say. Great, smashing, super!
Meanwhile "Northern spring wheat areas would receive little if any rainfall in the week ahead. Strong sunshine would encourage field drying and warming," they add. A nice little bonus at the end there.
In other news this morning Chinese customs data has soybean imports in April down 18.4% versus April 2012 at 3.98 MMT. Cumulative Jan/Apr 13 imports are down 14.8% at 15.47 MMT.
In other, other news disappearing honeybees are also causing a buzz in the US too according to this report from the Wall Street Journal Bzzzzzzz
Bloomberg are carrying an interesting story for all you chartists out there this morning, suggesting that new crop Nov 13 Paris wheat could fall to fresh one year lows if the price falls below resistance around the EUR205/tonne level. Link here.
Before we even think about Friday's USDA report (nice to see we are back to having to wait all weekend to react to it again) we have all sorts of data to sift through tomorrow:
The Bank of England's MPC meeting concludes; Conab release their Brazilian May supply & demand estimates; The FAO release their May supply & demand estimates; Defra are due to give us the latest UK cereals usage data: We also have the usual USDA weekly export sales report.
Informa are also said to be due out today or tomorrow with their 2013 US acreage estimates. Last month they gave us a corn acreage estimate of 97.753 million acres versus the USDA estimate of 97.3 million; A soybean acreage estimated of 78.457 million versus the USDA estimate of 77.1 million; A all wheat acreage estimate of 56.074 million versus a USDA estimate of 56.4 million.