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COT: Hedge funds zoom in on crude, copper, and silver
Commodities
Ole Hansen
Head of Commodity Strategy
Summary
- Notable hedge funds buying of crude, copper and silver left all three vulnerable to end of week dollar strength
- Gold buying paused ahead of FOMC with attention instead turning to silver
- Grain buying extended to a second week; funds sold into continued cocoa surge
- A seven-fold increase in the dollar long against seven IMM forex futures
Forex:
In the forex market, broad dollar strength continued ahead of Wednesday’s FOMC meeting resulting in a seven-fold increase in the gross dollar long against eight IMM forex futures to USD 7.9 billion. Except the Mexican peso which saw its net long jump to a four-year high supported by a rising carry, the bulk of the dollar buying was driven by a 35% reduction in the EUR long to an October 2022 low at 48.3k contacts. In addition, Bank of Japan’s dovish hike helped trigger fresh short selling of the yen, the AUD net short reached a record high at 107.5k contracts (USD 7 bn equivalent) while the CHF short reached a 28-month high at 20.5k contracts.
Commodities
The Bloomberg Commodity index, which tracks a basket of 24 major futures markets split between energy (30.1%), metals (34.2%) and agriculture (35.7%), traded higher for a third week, but while recent gains had been driven by broad sector strength, the gains seen during the latest reporting week were concentrated in energy and a few other commodities, most notably silver, copper, cocoa and coffee.
On an individual level, three commodities; crude oil, silver and copper stood out with buying of the three amounting to a nominal value of USD 13.4 billion, on an individual level lifting the net long of all three to one-year highs. With such an inflow of fresh longs these three markets were left vulnerable to the end of week correction that was triggered by a sharply stronger dollar, not least against the Chinese renminbi.
What is the Commitments of Traders report?
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:
- They are likely to have tight stops and no underlying exposure that is being hedged
- This makes them most reactive to changes in fundamental or technical price developments
- It provides views about major trends but also helps to decipher when a reversal is looming
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.
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Previous "Commitment of Traders" articles
18 Mch 2024: COT: Hedge funds buying expands from precious metals to copper and grains
11 Mch 2024: COT: Specs rush back into gold, elevated yen short in focus
4 Mch 2024: COT: Underinvested speculators fuel gold's latest surge
26 Feb 2024: COT: Record corn short, cocoa surge no longer supported by speculators
19 Feb 2024: COT: US inflation surprise drives broad selling of metals
5 Feb 2024:COT: Speculators chase false crude break; grain short extends further
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