Investors buy into oil before price rise

Commodity ETP Weekly – Investors buy into oil before price rise

•   WTI oil ETP inflows surged to a seven-month high.
•   Investors buy gold on dips.
•   Inflows into US natural gas ETPs hit a 4-month high.
•   Upcoming webinar: Global commodities, have we reached the floor in prices? Register here to attend.

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A hawkish post-meeting statement from the Federal Open Market Committee drove the US dollar (DXY) temporarily higher, suppressing gains in many commodities. However, subdued PCE deflators and muted increases in wages took the edge off upward US dollar pressure by the end of the week and barring any surprises, commodities should be able to trade on their own fundamentals. The week has started off with the release of better-than-expected manufacturing China Caixin and Euro Area PMIs and the market expects a US ISM reading above the expansionary 50 marker, which could provide a cyclical boost for commodity market sentiment.

WTI oil ETP inflows surged to a seven-month high. WTI oil bounced 6.3% on Wednesday following a lower-than-expected inventory build last week. In the run-up to the announcement, investors piled into long WTI oil ETPs (totalling more than US$86.2mn, between Friday and Wednesday), before taking profit on the news, leaving net inflows for the week at US$66.4mn, the highest since March 2015. Many investors correctly believed that the prior week’s excessively high inventory build would not be repeated. Indeed rig counts in the US have been declining for 9 consecutive weeks and are currently 63% below the levels last year. More than US$200bn of CAPEX cuts have been announced across the industry and the effect of the stalled projects will soon bite into global oil supply and moderate the glut. Meanwhile with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries operating at close to capacity, the traditional role of the cartel – to increase production in times of outages elsewhere – will be compromised, increasing the risk of price shocks in the oil market.

Investors buy gold on dips. The Federal Reserve’s hawkish post-meeting statement send gold 2.6% lower on Thursday, driving US$15.8mn into long gold ETPs on the day. For the week as a whole, we saw more than $31.5mn of inflows into long gold products as investors position for a potential bounce back. With the Fed downplaying global risks and conditioning their next rate move on the domestic market, many see the next two labour market reports as a pivotal guide to the timing of first rate hike in nine years. However, sophisticated investors realise that the payroll numbers in the labour market report are not only volatile, but subject to frequent and significant revisions. Gold’s decline this week could once again turn out to be premature.

Inflows into US natural gas ETPs hit a 4-month high. Natural gas prices surged 11% on Thursday after the release of storage data, which showed inventory building below expectations. Investors bought US$7.2mn of long natural gas ETPs during the week. We are likely to see some profit-taking from this, as inventories still lie more than 1 standard deviation above their five-year average, and prospects for a warmer winter with El Niño affecting US weather could see some of the recent injections being underutilised.

Key events to watch this week. Markets will be focused on the non-farm payrolls numbers out at the end of this week. A disappointing September reading and large downward revisions to July and August estimates has set the tone for a sub-200k consensus expectation for October. However, for many FOMC Governors, including NY Fed’s Dudley, a figure of 120k-150k is enough to ‘push the unemployment rate lower’ and could pull the trigger to vote for a rate hike. Should this month’s reading disappoint, we could see gold rally as rate hike expectations get pushed further out.

Video Presentation

Nitesh Shah, Research Analyst at ETF Securities provides an analysis of last week’s performance, flow and trading activity in commodity exchange traded products and a look at the week ahead.

For more information contact

ETF Securities Research team
ETF Securities (UK) Limited
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E info@etfsecurities.com

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BlackRock om Federal Reserves räntebesked

BlackRock om Federal Reserves räntebesked Rick Rieder Chief Investment Officer of Fundamental Fixed Income at BlackRock, and Co-Manager of Fixed Income Global Opportunities (FIGO), provides the below comments on yesterday’s Fed policy statement:

Highlights:

Following yesterday’s statement, we still think September is the most likely time for a start raising rates, but agree with Chair Yellen that the timing of lift-off is less important than the trajectory of rate change.

Labor markets appear stronger than at any time in the past two decades, wage gains and inflation appear to be following, and the Fed has a window of opportunity to begin its departure from “emergency” policy conditions and slowly take rates to more normal levels.

As we’ve argued, more normal interest rate levels, particularly if combined with well-designed fiscal actions, could actually prove to be beneficial to the economy, while maintaining excessively low policy rates for too long raises risks.

Extended Overview:

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee laid out a statement that continues to provide the central bank with the flexibility to respond to changes in the data over the coming months. We think that some of the statement’s adjustments highlight the Fed’s recognition that recent economic growth readings are stronger than the surprisingly softer data received during the year’s first quarter, but as mentioned, they also keep the Committee’s options open. For example, the statement’s first paragraph describes the economy in meaningfully more positive terms than did the April statement, but of course it also highlights that “business fixed investment and net exports stayed soft.”

However, we don’t believe that the data in the first quarter was as soft as the economics profession or the media has generally evaluated it to be, as indeed there were a series of seasonal factors that skewed the economic data lower, similar to other first quarter disappointments in recent years. These factors included: the harsh winter weather, year-end trends in corporate cap-ex, reduced government spending, labor unrest at West Coast ports and a tangible one-time currency shock. That being said, the Fed’s recognition of this and of the stronger data (even with the seasonal impact), opens the door for policy movement.

From the standpoint of the labor market recovery, the most recent employment report displayed a very robust 280,000 jobs gained, with revisions to March and April combining for an additional 32,000 jobs than previously reported. The longer-term strength in labor markets is highlighted by the fact that the 3-month, 6-month and 12-month moving average payroll gains came in at 207,000, 236,000, and 255,000, respectively, which is considerably stronger than the 200,000 average level of jobs growth that has been typical of past periods of economic expansion. In fact, the 5.6 million jobs created in the past 24 months is greater than the combined total created in the 13 years prior, so we clearly see the evidence for an employment landscape that is, arguably, stronger than at any time over the past 20 years.

Furthermore, one of the key arguments of doves at the Fed has been the general lack of wage improvement over much of this economic cycle, although as we’ve suggested in the past, even here we’re seeing meaningful improvement. In fact, average hourly earnings gained 0.3% last month (running at 2.3% year-over-year) and are starting to display the strengthening seen in indicators such as the Employment Cost Index. The Fed’s recognition of wage increases and the longer-term nature of inflation guidance means that the central bank doesn’t need a 2% reading on a wide series of inflation metrics in the short-term to begin moving rates. And we would applaud that position, as wage pressure and the consequential impact of lower levels of slack in the economy takes time to work its way into broader inflation readings.

While we believe the data is currently strong enough for the Fed to act, the Committee will likely be very deliberate with this first move. Indeed, the central bank significantly lowered its real GDP growth forecast for 2015 (reflecting the first quarter weakness), but it modestly upgraded the growth prospects of 2016 and 2017. Further, when judging the path of the target Federal Funds Rate, the Committee consensus implies lift-off for later this year, but also suggests we will see a shallower trajectory of rate increases in 2016 and 2017 than had been previously estimated.

In our view, the specific date, which we still anticipate to be September, with some outside possibility of July or October, is significantly less important than the pace of policy rate change. Still, we think that the Fed has been very clear – with Fed Chair Yellen using the word “gradual” 14 times in her last speech, highlighting that the pace will be very slow. The lower level of the longer-dated dots also suggests that the anticipated rate destination will be lower than it has been historically. In our view, the normalization of rates, particularly if combined with well-designed fiscal initiatives, could actually be a benefit to economic growth. Further, keeping rates at excessively low levels, while perhaps stimulative for the financial economy, also raises risks that might threaten to undermine the recovery. Consequently, the time for a move away from “emergency rate” levels is at hand.

Valuations of long-end interest rates, given their recent back-up have approached close to a fair value levels, and nothing that the Fed has said should dramatically influence that movement from here. We do believe that with any negative resolution of the Greece situation, however, the flight-to-quality bid may take 15 to 20 basis points off of 10 year yields.