Filed under: Trader Dan Norcini
Dear Friends,
The weekly Commitment of Traders Report released yesterday (Friday) has a detail that I believe merits bringing to your attention.
Managed Money, which is basically the hedge funds, is now down to the lowest level of net long positions held since July 2009. They are now down nearly 86,000 net longs from the point at which gold made its recent record high. It should be noted that the COT report only covers through the Tuesday of the current week and therefore does not catch any developments in the markets that occur Wednesday through the close of trading on Friday. On Tuesday, gold closed at $1384. By Friday it has dropped over $30 from that level as additional fund long liquidation was underway. The point is that the net long position of these hedge funds has undoubtedly dropped to an even lower level.
In spite of the relatively low level of fund long side exposure, gold is sitting a mere $70 off its all time high. That bodes well for gold moving forward as any “froth” that might have been in the gold market from the hedge fund community has been to a great extent wrung out.
The general public, the small specs, who generally tend to buy at tops and sell at bottoms, is still relatively high on long side exposure but I suspect a larger number of them have been flushed out in Friday’s steep drop. They do not generally have pockets deep enough to sustain drops of large magnitude and are most often the recipients of “courtesy calls” from the margin clerks.
The other reportables, which includes the CTA’s and large local and private traders are a bit extended to the long side yet so we will have to see whether or not the shorts can try to further flush this camp. They have generally been averaging a net long side exposure of near 40,000 contracts. As of Tuesday they were near 57,000 which was also probably further reduced in the subsequent price action of Thursday and Friday. We might need to see this camp bleed down a bit more before feeling confident enough that the liquidation from their quarter has been exhausted.
All in all, while the COT report is not bullish, it certainly cannot be considered bearish and might even be called a tad friendly particularly based on the now greatly reduced long side exposure of managed money accounts, which are the real drivers of today’s commodity markets. When this camp begins to return to the gold market in size is when we will see the next leg higher commence.
By the way, the last time that the Managed Money was at this level of net long side exposure, the price of gold was trading at $922.
DAN'S CHART:
http://jsmineset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Gold-COT-1-14-2011.pdf
The weekly Commitment of Traders Report released yesterday (Friday) has a detail that I believe merits bringing to your attention.
Managed Money, which is basically the hedge funds, is now down to the lowest level of net long positions held since July 2009. They are now down nearly 86,000 net longs from the point at which gold made its recent record high. It should be noted that the COT report only covers through the Tuesday of the current week and therefore does not catch any developments in the markets that occur Wednesday through the close of trading on Friday. On Tuesday, gold closed at $1384. By Friday it has dropped over $30 from that level as additional fund long liquidation was underway. The point is that the net long position of these hedge funds has undoubtedly dropped to an even lower level.
In spite of the relatively low level of fund long side exposure, gold is sitting a mere $70 off its all time high. That bodes well for gold moving forward as any “froth” that might have been in the gold market from the hedge fund community has been to a great extent wrung out.
The general public, the small specs, who generally tend to buy at tops and sell at bottoms, is still relatively high on long side exposure but I suspect a larger number of them have been flushed out in Friday’s steep drop. They do not generally have pockets deep enough to sustain drops of large magnitude and are most often the recipients of “courtesy calls” from the margin clerks.
The other reportables, which includes the CTA’s and large local and private traders are a bit extended to the long side yet so we will have to see whether or not the shorts can try to further flush this camp. They have generally been averaging a net long side exposure of near 40,000 contracts. As of Tuesday they were near 57,000 which was also probably further reduced in the subsequent price action of Thursday and Friday. We might need to see this camp bleed down a bit more before feeling confident enough that the liquidation from their quarter has been exhausted.
All in all, while the COT report is not bullish, it certainly cannot be considered bearish and might even be called a tad friendly particularly based on the now greatly reduced long side exposure of managed money accounts, which are the real drivers of today’s commodity markets. When this camp begins to return to the gold market in size is when we will see the next leg higher commence.
By the way, the last time that the Managed Money was at this level of net long side exposure, the price of gold was trading at $922.
DAN'S CHART:
http://jsmineset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Gold-COT-1-14-2011.pdf
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