Quiet Day Ahead

In what promises to be a relatively quiet day with the US on Thanksgiving duty, gold has moved to fresh all-time highs again in early trade.

Gold is everybody's darling at the moment, reports that Sri Lanka bought 10 MT from the IMF and rumours that India might buy more of the yellow metal have propelled it to new highs overnight.

The dollar is weaker (although the pound is even weaker), plumbing to 14-year lows against the yen and 15 month lows against the euro. Russia's Central Bank says it will buy Canadian dollars instead to reduce it's exposure to the declining greenback.

The pound is down across the board on reports that British bank's exposure in Dubai is a worry after the country's largest corporate debtor, Dubai World, is looking to delay the repayment of some of it's USD59 billion liabilities.

The US Energy Department said yesterday that crude oil inventories rose 1 million barrels last week, a bit less than had been expected, even so that was to a four-week high of 337.8 million barrels. Crude oil is around a dollar/barrel weaker this morning.

Palm oil is at fifteen week highs overnight on expectations that exports will outpace production this month.

London wheat has opened with March up GBP1.00/tonne on follow through support from last night's strong CBOT performance and a sharply weaker sterling.

Egypt bought mostly Russian wheat in yesterday's tender, although French wheat did manage to get a look in, with Glencore selling them 60,000 MT at USD201/tone.

Ukraine's grain harvest is just about finished and will total 48 MMT they say, 10% down on last year's 53.3 MMT.