"Hedge funds' bearish bets on ags hit record high"

From Agrimoney:

Hedge funds focused bearish attention on soybeans, raw sugar and arabica coffee as they hiked their net short positions in agricultural commodities to an all-time high, far exceeding the previous record.

Managed money, a proxy for speculators, raised its net short position in futures and options in the top 13 US-traded agricultural commodities, from corn to cattle, by more than 96,000 contracts in the week to last Tuesday, analysis of data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulator shows.

The increase took the net short – the extent to which short holdings, which profit when values fall, exceed long bets, which benefit when prices gain - to 195,117 lots, by far the biggest on records going back to 2006.

The previous record net short was 142,612 contracts, set in mid-April.

Change of attitude

The positioning reflected in part a further selldown in Chicago soybean futures and options, in which hedge funds raised their net short above 100,000 lots for the first time on data going back to 2006....MORE