Hedge funds and other money managers sold the equivalent of 23 million barrels in the six most important petroleum futures and options contracts over the seven days ending on April 16.
Purchases of Brent (+31 million barrels) were more than offset by sales of NYMEX and ICE WTI (-35 million), US gasoline (-5 million), US diesel (-5 million) and European gas oil (-9 million) .
Brent is most exposed to production and shipping disruptions as a result of conflict in the Middle East and fund managers increased their net position to 335 million barrels (75th percentile for all weeks since 2013).
But much of this additional exposure seems to have rotated out from WTI, where funds sold at the fastest rate for 10 weeks and the net position was trimmed to just 183 million barrels (31st percentile).
While fund managers had become strongly bullish on Brent they were increasingly bearish about prospects for WTI.
In the first NYMEX WTI contract, there was evidence of a fresh cycle of short selling, which had started four weeks earlier when prices climbed above $80 per barrel.
Fund managers had boosted short positions equivalent to 71 million barrels by April 16, up from 23 million on March 19.
In refined fuels, previous bullishness about a continued depletion of inventories and a further rise in prices had also started to ebb away.
The hedge fund community is generally bullish about the outlook for both crude and fuel prices but not with much conviction.
Bullish long positions outnumber bearish short ones by a ratio of 3.60:1 which is in only the 42nd percentile for all weeks since 2013.
There are upside risks from Middle East conflict, production restraint by Saudi Arabia and its OPEC+ allies, and a cyclical economic upswing in the United States
But these are offset by downside risks from strong growth in non-OPEC output, persistent inflation, higher-for-longer interest rates, and a desultory economic recovery in Europe and China.
Escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has masked a slight deterioration of investor sentiment about the outlook for oil prices in recent weeks.
Once the conflict appeared to have been contained, with Israel’s limited retaliation against Iran, prices have withdrawn.
