Thursday, September 16, 2010

With Humble Apologies to MarketBeat: "Wednesday Wheat Watch: Winter Weather Worries"

Back on August 2 I said In "Climateer Line of the Day: Staff of Life Edition":
Yes, here at station W-EAT it's all wheat, all the time.*
From The Progressive Farmer's Market Matters blog:

...Reuters cited Rich Feltes at MFGlobal, who said he thinks wheat futures will get to $7. Feltes was quoted saying, "Structurally, everybody has been leaning the wrong way, and now you'll have every doctor and dentist wanting to own a piece of this (wheat market) now."... 
*When MarketBeat gets around to putting up a wheat post we should be looking for a lock limit-down day.
I asked nicely, on Friday and again today, "What about wheat?" the response?:
...In addition, the index has topped the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the decline from the April 26 high of 11258 to the July 2 low of 9614, which comes in at 10630. Fibonacci followers believe that as long as a rebound remains below the 61.8% retracement level, the previous downtrend remains intact...
I've nothing against Leonardo da Pisa, and some of his followers can hold their own, but come on, wheat just ran 67% in seven weeks!
(we caught around 40 of those percentage points) 
Well, they haven't been fooling around recently:
On Tuesday we linked to their "Wheat: No Rain Yet for Next Year's Russian Crop" :
with the intro:
Folks, this could get serious. This year's crop failure would just be a blip on the charts if next years crop comes in but if they don't get rain in the next few weeks....
The futures have been generally up the last week or so, closing yesterday at $7.46....
Yesterday they came back with:
The race to plant wheat in Russia is coming down to the wire, and Mother Nature is only helping a little.

Two parts of Russia’s wheat belt - Krasnodar and Voronezh - are due to get some rain in the coming days, according to the official HydroMetCenter, as relayed by our colleagues at Dow Jones Newswires.

But the skies are still dry in key parts of the Volga River region, including around Saratov, where a farmer named Vladimir Klevtsevich is hoping there will be enough moisture for the crop he’s started to plant, as detailed in an article this weekend. And a lot of seeds still aren’t in the ground, with winter fast approaching - Russia’s agriculture ministry said Tuesday that 5.8 million hectares have been planted, well below the 18 million hectares the government is aiming for and even the 12 million it considers a worst-case scenario.

Moreover, SovEcon, a major agricultural research firm, says domestic grain prices are no longer sliding, as they did when Russia imposed an export ban on wheat last month, Dow Jones reports - a revelation that suggests there will be no rush to lift that ban....MORE
After that slow start MarketBeat is now reporting the weather in the Black Sea region more than any other general market source.
And this could be the story of spring 2011 unless the world catches some breaks very soon.

Sorry for ever doubting your greatness MB.