Hedge Fund Commodity Positioning

From Bloomberg via Hellenic Shipping News: 

Hedge Funds Are Suffering From Metal Fatigue
Commodity funds are going soft.

The investors who helped bid upwards the toll of LME copper to a four-year high of $7,348 a metric ton terminal calendar month are beating a path to the door. Holdings of investment funds inwards Chicago copper futures this calendar month crashed to a internet brusque seat for the kickoff fourth dimension since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump inwards 2016, having hitting a tape internet long of 125,376 contracts every bit late every bit September.

Other difficult commodities are showing similar weakness. In aureate – whose characteristics are seen every bit together with then dissimilar to copper that the 2 are ofttimes played off against each other – the seat of investment funds likewise slipped into internet brusque territory terminal week, reversing a two-and-a-half yr bull run. Platinum, which has been struggling for much of this year, hitting its deepest internet brusque inwards information going dorsum to 2009.

It’s some other film solely inwards softer products. Investment fund positioning inwards soybean meal, cocoa together with cotton wool has been hovering about multi-year highs, despite suffering some slight reversals inwards recent months. Soft cherry-red wintertime wheat – a perennially unloved crop for coin managers – is likewise enjoying a rare spell exterior of net-short territory.

Meanwhile inwards petroleum, positioning inwards Nymex WTI unsmooth together with RBOB gasoline contracts are simply a sliver below the tape highs hitting before this year. Brent crude, gasoil together with natural gas accept suffered to a greater extent than dramatic falls inwards investor thought amongst the metals over the past times 2 months, but notwithstanding rest at internet length that would accept been inconceivable until a few years ago.

It’s non a universal pattern. Fuel oil – a heavier fraction from oil refineries that’s inwards problem because of the impending clean-up of transportation emissions nosotros wrote well-nigh terminal calendar week – has flipped into sharply negative territory this year. Net shorts inwards soybeans together with soybean oil offset the long seat inwards soybean meal, though the total processing margins generated past times the 3 U.S. soybean contracts are notwithstanding at elevated levels....MUCH MORE