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A week that saw a continued deterioration in the global growth outlook driven by extended China lockdowns and increasingly aggressive rate hike signals from members of the US FOMC. The S&P 500 lost 6.4% while VIX jumped 12% to 33.5%. The broad Bloomberg dollar index rose 1.3% while ten-year bond yields slumped by 22 basis points to 2.72%.
Saxo Bank publishes weekly Commitment of Traders reports (COT) covering leveraged fund positions in commodities, bonds and stock index futures. For IMM currency futures and the VIX, we use the broader measure called non-commercial.
Commodities
The Bloomberg Commodity Spot index dropped 2.3% after hitting a post-Easter record high with all sectors registering losses led by industrial metals (-5.2%) and precious metals (-4%). In response to these developments, hedge funds cut bets on rising commodity prices by the most since last November. Seventeen out of 24 contracts saw net selling with overall net long being reduced by 8% to 2 million lots, representing a $14.3 billion drop in the nominal value to $149.3 billion.
Biggest reductions hitting the metal sector led by gold and copper, followed by the softs sector. The energy sector saw no appetite for adding exposure, despite strong gains among the fuel contracts.
Latest updates on crude oil, gold and copper can be found in our daily Market Quick Take here
Energy
Crude oil was mixed with surging fuel prices supporting a relative outperformance of the WTI contract, but overall a 12k lots increase in WTI was more than offset by a 14k lots reduction in Brent, on global demand concerns, thereby leaving the net down by 2k to 411k lots, and near a 17-month low.
Fuel products surged higher amid tightness caused by Russian sanctions with gasoil in Europe and diesel in New York (ULSD) both surging higher by 30% and 27% respectively. These changes, however, did not attract any appetite for adding risk with both contracts seeing only small changes.
Metals
The combination of growth concerns, especially in China, and very aggressive rate hike statements from US FOMC members, combined with a stronger dollar, helped drive a dismal week for both industrial and precious metals.
Speculators responded to the 2.8% drop in gold by cutting bullish bets by 20% to 99.4k lots with the bulk of the change being driven by long liquidation, not fresh short selling. A similar picture in silver which in response to a 7.4% loss saw its net long being cut by 36% to 26.5k lots.
Platinum saw 13.3k lots of selling flip the net positions back to a net short for the first time since September. HG Copper fared even worse with speculators wiping the slate clean with the net returning close to neutral for the first time since May 2020 when the price was trading close to half the current level.