Brent can’t catch a break now down again overnight to $56.52. There was no real news of interest but the strong run in the US dollar appears to be enough for now to keep it falling. John Kemp notes that the market is very short:
Hedge funds and other money managers have rarely been so bearish about the outlook for oil prices, according to the latest positioning data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Hedge funds boosted short positions in futures and options linked to the price of U.S. crude to 138 million barrels by July 14, from 84 million four weeks earlier. Over the same period, they cut long positions from 340 million to 292 million barrels.
The hedge fund community has an inherent long-bias, but the ratio of long to short positions, at just over 2:1, down from 4:1 a month ago, is among the lowest in the last six years.
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
Hedge funds and other money managers have rarely been so bearish about the outlook for oil prices, according to the latest positioning data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
