Sliding oil prices attract bargain hunters

The depreciation of the Yuan against the US dollar by 3.4 percent last week caused by reform to the fixing method sent reverberations across commodity markets, revitalizing gold’s safe haven status

Long WTI and Brent crude oil ETPs received US$ 48.2mn and US$12.0mn respectively marking the seventh consecutive week of inflows into oil ETPs. The monthly report by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) confirmed that OPEC continues to keep the world oversupplied as their collective output surpassed 31.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) compared to their target of 30 mb/d. Bargain hunters took support from the monthly International Energy Agency (IEA) report that revised the 2015 global growth outlook upwards, raising demand expectations by 1.6mb/d in 2015, by the fastest pace in five years. The weekly US Energy Information Agency (EIA) report showed US crude oil supplies fell by 1.7m barrels, just shy of expectations. However EIA crude stocks are 86.5mn barrels above year ago levels and 93.2mn barrels above the five year average. The WTI crude oil price fell to a 6½ year low of US$41.3 per barrel considerably lower than its global counterpart Brent oil that hovered below US$50 per barrel leading to a widening price gap US$7 per barrel, last seen in May 2015. This has been blamed on rising storage levels at Cushing. Crude oil imports for the week stood at 7.5mb/d compared to 7.18mb/d the previous week. Evidently China took advantage of lower oil prices by importing a record volume of 30.71mn tons of crude oil in the first 7 months of the year up 10% since a year ago.

Outflows of US$106.2mn from gold ETPs marked the 13th consecutive week of redemptions. China’s change in currency policy lent support to gold, which rose to a three-week high of $1120/oz. ETP investors took profit, reaccelerating redemptions, which seemed to have slowed the week prior. The World Gold council (WGC) highlighted just how weak demand for the yellow metal was in Q2, with consumer demand in India and China falling 25% and 3% respectively. The industry body however expects current low prices to ignite consumer demand in these countries in a similar way to 2013.

Agricultural ETPs continue to see strong inflows. ETFS Agriculture (AIGA), ETFS Wheat (WEAT) and ETFS Corn (CORN) each saw their third consecutive week of inflows, of US$6.6mn, US$2.3mn and US$2.6mn respectively. In its latest monthly report, the USDA raised its US corn production forecasts by 1.2% driving its price down 1.6% over the week. However, with an intensifying El Nino likely to disrupt production later this year, ETP investors accumulated positions in corn in anticipation of a price rebound.

Outflows from ETFS leveraged Coffee (LCFE) rose to the highest level in 10 weeks. Arabica coffee prices rose 10.3% last week, driving profit-taking. Prices rose despite IBGE, the Brazilian government’s official statistics institute raising its forecast by 800k bags for the Brazilian coffee crop to 44.2m bags.

Key events to watch this week Investors will continue to remain focused on PMI data in Europe and industrial production in the US.

Aneeka Gupta, CFA – Research Analyst – ETF Securities