Formerly NE North Dakota, now NW MN | The currency thing has been huge for wheat the last little while. Australian dollar has a long term trend of strengthening against the dollar pretty firmly in place, so that's not so bad. The loonie on the other hand is a wild card. I would give the loonie's short-term shot of strength credit for contributing fairly significantly to the wheat rally, but then wheat also maintained those price levels (so far) in the face of renewed weakness (so I guess that's encouraging). Still, that will be an interesting relationship to watch going forward.
As for Ukraine, political unrest has to be up there with weather scares as events that commentators assign too much weight too. Just like weather problems, they certainly can influence markets, but looking at historical examples, I don't think they are often market movers. During the Arab Spring, Egypt managed to maintain somewhat of an import pace, Argy is always a political tinder-box, pretty much always threatening to stop exporting everything forever, and yet they continue to export stuff. I know there's another one I got burned on once, but I'm just not thinking of it right now.... |
long, in reply to your thread hijack that disapeared
