Macro: Sandcastle economics
Invest wisely in Q3 2024: Discover SaxoStrats' insights on navigating a stable yet fragile global economy.
Head of Commodity Strategy
Summary: This summary highlights futures positions and changes made by hedge funds across commodities, forex and bonds in the week to last Tuesday, October 10. A week that started on a positive note before ending with a flurry of safe haven demand following Hamas’ attack on Israel. Prior to last Monday’s geopolitical turmoil, stock markets had enjoyed a strong week with Treasury yields and the dollar falling after several Federal Reserved members said surging Treasury yields had reduced the need for additional rate hikes.
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.