Thank you Tango, I really do appreciate that and will be happy to post my figures directly to the board here. As for figures in general, I wld like to point out a few issues;

1. As for Conab - and I don't know how long you have been following the Brazil crop estimates - but since about 5-6 years ago Conab actually raised their figures significantly, and even if a lot of people in the trade believe these figures are too low, the Conab and/or previous official Brazil numbers, used to be MUCH more below the figures you mention as compared to those published by trade.

2. Also, re Brazil figures, when we look at how much higher or lower a Brazil number is, we should not forget that from production at about 30M bags 30 years ago to 60M-66M today, obviously the difference in numbers also reflect that, so with higher numbers and bigger world crop influence it would be unrealistic to forget that the speculation as to WHAT the Brazil number obviously also will be bigger.

3. ANd one very important point, that many people across the coffee industry in general tempt to forget entirely, just because we have 10 or more DIFFERENT trade groups, multinationals and/or banks/funds that all agree on a higher outlook does NOT make such figures more correct; If we ever are going to get an accurate MEDIAN for the Brazil group, we/someone should specify 5-6-7 different groups and then make the median based on the median from EACH group, i.e. that could be;
1. Private traders/multinationals
2. Banks, funds, financial consultancy/brokers
3. Official Conab number
4. ICO
5. USDA
5. Producer groups
6. Independent analysts

--If we have ONE single MEDIAN figure from each of these groups, then we would ACTUALLY get a median figure that is much more representative of both own interest and different kind of methodology, view and overall analysis. What do you think, any thoughts??

Happy coffee drinking to all,
Maja