Martha Dowding
Research Associate, Flux
CFTC Weekly: Spec Players Risk-On in Crude
In the week ending 06 Jan, liquidity returned after some stagnation in markets in the lead up to Christmas.
In the week ending 06 Jan, liquidity returned after some stagnation in markets in the lead up to Christmas, and we saw geopolitics start to dominate the market narrative.
- Geopolitical risk premia in prices were subdued with the capture of President Nicolás Maduro on 03 Jan, which left the US in control of Venezuela. There has been a significant push from the Trump administration for oil majors to commit to spending money here, but we have yet to see any tangible results. Data from the CFTC is now up-to-date with its European counterpart.
- Combined open interest in Brent and WTI futures saw a weekly increase of over 2.34%. Producers/merchants exited around 1.16% of their overall length in the two benchmark futures, while their short counterparts added to their positions. Speculative players were also fairly bullish, adding just shy of 2% to their combined length w/w, with combined short positions quite flat w/w, seeing an increase of less than 0.05%. We observed this net flat position in Shorts with funds adding to overall short positions in Brent, but removing positions in WTI.
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