Head of Commodity Strategy
Summary: Our weekly Commitment of Traders update highlights future positions and changes made by hedge funds and other speculators across commodities and forex during the week to Tuesday, June 27. A week that overall saw small losses in stocks, an unchanged dollar and rising bond yields after a flurry of economic data showed surprise strength across the US economy, raising the prospect for higher Fed funds rates while further delaying any likelihood of recession. Speculators, responded to these latest developments by cutting exposure across 15 of the 24 major futures contracts tracked in this update, with the heaviest selling seen in crude oil, gold, platinum and most soft commodities
The COT reports are issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the ICE Exchange Europe for Brent crude oil and gas oil. They are released every Friday after the U.S. close with data from the week ending the previous Tuesday. They break down the open interest in futures markets into different groups of users depending on the asset class.
Commodities: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User, Swap dealers, Managed Money and other
Financials: Dealer/Intermediary; Asset Manager/Institutional; Leveraged Funds and other
Forex: A broad breakdown between commercial and non-commercial (speculators)
The main reasons why we focus primarily on the behavior of speculators, such as hedge funds and trend-following CTA's are:
Do note that this group tends to anticipate, accelerate, and amplify price changes that have been set in motion by fundamentals. Being followers of momentum, this strategy often sees this group of traders buy into strength and sell into weakness, meaning that they are often found holding the biggest long near the peak of a cycle or the biggest short position ahead of a through in the market.
This summary highlights futures positions and changes made by hedge funds across commodities and forex during the week to last Tuesday, June 27. A week that overall saw small losses in stocks, an unchanged dollar and rising bond yields after a flurry of economic data showed surprise strength across the US economy, raising the prospect for higher Fed funds rates while further delaying any likelihood of recession. The commodity sector meanwhile took a hit with all the major sectors seeing lower prices amid ongoing demand concerns, not least from China, the world’s top consumer of raw materials.
In the week to June 27, the Bloomberg Commodity Index dropped 2.3%, thereby reversing a similar gain during the previous reporting week. Losses were broad and led by agricultural commodities from sugar to corn and coffee, with energy, precious and industrial metals also seeing weaker price action.
Speculators, responding to these latest developments by cutting exposure across 15 of the 24 major futures contracts tracked in this. Selling was heaviest in crude oil with gold, platinum and most soft commodities also seeing net selling. Despite trading lower on the week, the grains sector continued to see net buying as speculators scrambled to rebuild positions in response to early June strength, a focus that saw them fail respond to emerging price weakness as the attention turn from drought to the prospect for beneficial rains across key US growing areas.
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