Energy:
Crude oil saw net selling for a second week after a near 10% drop during the first few days of trading rattle the market and helped reduce the combined net long by 13.6k contracts, most of the activity being focused on WTI long liquidation (-10.8k) and fresh short selling in Brent (+10k). Natural gas’ continued slump, this time by 9% to a September 2021 low helped drive a 35% increase in the net short across four Henry Hub deliverable futures and swap contracts to 97.6k contracts, and highest since March 2020.
Metals:
For a second week, speculators concentrated their buying efforts in gold and copper as both metals continued to build on the positive momentum that has been developing since early November. The gold net long reached 82.6k contracts, an eight month high, and during six consecutive weeks of buying the net long has rising almost three-fold.
Copper, meanwhile, saw accelerated buying as funds following months of trading the metal with a short bias, were forced to play catchup as the price continued to break higher through several layers of resistance. The net long jumped 20.5k to 28.8k contracts, a nine-month high on a combination of longs being added and shorts being reduced.
Agriculture:
Ahead of Thursday’s for corn bullish WASDE report, speculators had wrongly as it turned out in response to a 2.3% selloff cut their net long by 24% to 149.6k contracts. All the three major crops saw net selling with a +6% tumble in wheat on raised competition with Black Sea sellers, helped increase the net short in CBOT wheat by 20% while the KCBT wheat flipped to a net short for the first time since August 2020. In softs, the sugar long was cut by 27% while a continued coffee crumble, down 9.3% on the week to a 17-month low, drove a 154% increase in the net short to 30k contacts, the biggest bet on lower prices since November 2019.