Funds Returning to Commodities in a Major Way

Earlier this week I wrote about the impact of funds buying back into commodities during 2016, including record net long positions that have driven the LME index of prices up by 36% since 1 January 2016. Well, there's further solid evidence of growing fund interest in commodities, with the latest data from Societe Generale showing that total investments in the Bloomberg and S&P GSCI indexes have risen by +90% to around $115 billion currently from a low of about $60 billion at the start of 2016. By comparison, the Bloomberg Index is up by 12% since the beginning of last year. Energy ETFs attracted $390 million this month, following $2.65 billion of outflows during December, with almost $40 million attracted to industrial metals. Even hedge funds and other large speculators who report to the U.S. government are bullish on 15 of 18 raw materials tracked by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The combined net-long positions across these 18 raw materials have risen in six of the past eight weeks, according to commission data tracked by Bloomberg.