CFTC weekly report – TDS

Analysts at TD Securities explained the CFTC weekly report, noting the weakness in EMs.

Key Quotes:

“Money managers left their net exposure to gold largely unchanged, with spec long positioning nearing its lowest levels since late 2015.”  

Weakness in emerging market currencies such as the Chinese Yuan, along with central bank divergences have been the main drivers for the yellow metal of late. But, gold seems to have found a bottom just as Chinese officials cooled worries of the yuan being weaponized. In addition, platinum specs have continued further into net short territory as both precious metal sentiment and trade-war worries drove the industrial precious metal briefly below $800/oz.”

“Copper traders aggressively liquidated their length and increased their shorts as the first shots fired between the US and China created too much angst for the bulls to stomach, while the shorts likely sought to take advantage of the building downward momentum. And, despite the aggressive $1000/t correction in prices, threats from the White House of a far larger round of retaliatory sanctions will likely keep speculative length at bay for now.”

“Following a strong week for prices, money managers remained unconvinced to either increase or decrease their WTI crude oil length, as a bout of diverging information flow left their aggregate convictions unchanged on net. While trade fears materialized and US inventories built substantially above expectations last week, international outages in Canada and nearly 850k bpd from disputes at Libyan ports have added to the issues in Venezuela and Iran kept traders from fretting about local supplies.”