Tuesday, March 24, 2015

"Ag prices 'may rebound', after hedge funds turn most bearish ever"

As noted in March 18's "Crops The Worst Bet Among Commodities, says Goldman":
One of the reasons we flagged them for a possible upside surprise.
At the moment we are in voyeur mode, just watching....
Corn          389-6 down 0-4
Wheat       525-6 down 8-2
Soybeans   980-4 down 3-0

From Agrimoney:
Agricultural commodity futures may be poised for a wave of support from covering of short bets, after a selldown by hedge funds left them, by a distance, with their most bearish ever positioning.
Managed money, a proxy for speculators, dropped long positions on agricultural commodities by more than 40,000 lots in the week to last Tuesday, while hiking short bets – which profit when prices fall - by some 110,000 contracts, regulatory data show.

The resulting swing net short in positioning by 151,826 contracts was the largest in nearly two years.

And it drove the overall position into a net short – the extent to which short holdings exceed long ones - of 102,126 lots, by far the biggest on Commodity Futures Trading Commission data going back to 2006.

'Reason for short covering'

Only once before, in the first week of August 2013, have hedge funds run up a net short in agricultural commodities, of a modest 2,686 contracts.

That heralded a sharp round of short-covering, with the managed money position returning to a net long of nearly 300,000 lots within three weeks.
And some analysts forecast this time that the latest turn net short could also spur a round of short-covering, with extreme positions, net long or net short, raising concerns that appetite for extending the trend further may be limited....MORE

Also at Agrimoney:

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