Crude Oil Sees Fastest Buying Pace in Two Years

Energy

Speculators continued their rapid accumulation of length in crude oil futures and during the past four weeks, the net buying of WTI and Brent reached 155k lots, a rapid four-week accumulation of this magnitude was last seen in January 2020, just before the pandemic temporary sucked the life out of the market. The combined net long reached a ten-week high at 559k lots or 559 million barrels with WTI buying of 23.7 lots offsetting a small 2k lot reduction in Brent. Even though it was small, the reduction in Brent may signal fading belief in its short term ability to break above $90, a level that was almost reached during the week.

Metals

The gold net long was reduced for a third week, albeit at a slower pace. The 4% reduction to 84.5k was primarily driven by fresh short-selling from funds fading the rally towards $1830, a recent resistance level now turned support. Silver’s emerging relative strength which during the week saw the gold-silver ratio drop by 3.4% helped drive a 33% increase in the net long to 23.8k lots, a seven-week high. Copper’s one percent weakness did not deter traders, as they increased their net long to near a three month high at 28.2k lots. In platinum, the net short was reduced by 62% to just 1.3k lots.

Agriculture

Speculators reduced length in soybeans and corn while wheat was mixed with buying of Chicago and selling of Kansas. In softs, cocoa and coffee saw strong buying interest. Despite rallying by 3% the net long in sugar kept falling to reach a 19-month low., thereby making it a potential strong recovery candidate with surging fuel prices raising the prospect for increased bio-fuel production. Cotton’s 4.4% jump only attracted a small amount of additional buying from funds seeking to get involved in the commodity with the highest roll yield, currently around 20% on a one-year basis.