CFTC: stimulus talks halts the slide in commodity investments

Money managers and other leveraged traders increased their net long exposure to commodities by 3 percent according to the latest data from the CFTC covering the week ending June 12. The net long across the 24 different commodity futures and options we track in this report rose to 1,067,000 contracts or the equivalent of USD 76.9 billion. Although talks about additional economic stimulus helped steady the boat most of the buying was centered around agricultural commodities as they saw an increase of 13 percent.

Overall it was a relatively quiet week with no major changes as the table below highlights. Traders were eagerly awaiting the meeting of OPEC and the Greek election.

 Highlights:

- the metals sector saw a five percent increase as buying were seen across all five metals apart from silver;

- the energy sector experienced an eight percent reduction as natural gas longs were trimmed just ahead of the biggest rally in 33 months;

- crude oil positioning has stabilized following the sharp reduction during the last month. It was unchanged on the week as a selling in NYMEX WTI was offset by similar buying of ICE WTI;

- soybeans buying accounted for most of the 39k contract increase in the grain sector with traders continuing to be wrong-footed by these weather motivated moves.

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