Metals: Bullish gold bets were scaled back for a second week with profit taking and fresh short selling emerging ahead of the FOMC meeting and following the recent rejection above $1900. The 10% reduction reduced the net long to 114k lots, a four week low. Silver saw a small amount of buying while copper longs were cut to just 20k lots, a one-year low and some 71k lots below the peak from last October. Once the weak technical outlook, supported by an expected improvement in the fundamental outlook, starts turning the price may see a strong bounce from buyers returning.
Agriculture: The grain and soybean sector continued to deflate with speculators cutting the combined net long in corn, wheat and soybeans by 15% to 352k lots, the lowest since last October. While the wheat net-short extended to 8.4k lots it was corn and not least soybeans that saw most of the selling. This on a combination of improved weather raising production expectations and potentially a reduction in demand for biofuels to be blended with gasoline.
Forex
In forex, the flows across ten IMM currency futures and the Dollar Index were very mixed but overall they resulted in continued dollar selling with the net short reaching a three-month high at $19.3 billion