Farm Progress

Index traders and speculators dumped crops and livestock.

Bryce Knorr 1, Senior Market Analyst, Farm Futures

April 7, 2017

9 Slides

Whether the mood involved war or peace, investors wanted to buy crude oil last week. But that enthusiasm didn’t extend to agriculture, where both big speculators and those trading commodity indexes were again selling. That helped punish prices as trading in April got underway.

Some of the trading by index funds may have been front-running before the start of the Goldman roll, which began April 7. The CFTC data was collected as of April 4. Volume typically increases when index traders roll positions out of nearby futures, a process that takes five days. Some traders may have preferred to do their rolls early, rather than get caught up in heavy traffic on the close.

Here’s a look at what the funds were doing in the latest week, according to the Commitment of Traders reports.

About the Author(s)

Bryce Knorr 1

Senior Market Analyst, Farm Futures

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