US natural gas rose 9.08 percent to 3.05 dollars per million British thermal units, the biggest move in the tables. This morning’s commodities reporting offers no new supply or weather headline for the jump; it comes against the record money manager short documented in Friday’s CFTC data, which makes the position itself the squeeze risk (see today’s update to the record short in US natural gas story).
WTI crude rose 3.82 percent to 103.27 dollars a barrel, its Friday settlement, while Brent showed 111.70 dollars in the latest table snapshot, down 1.3 percent from Friday’s 116.72 dollar settlement (see today’s update to the Brent five month high story). The two series are snapshots taken at different points in the weekend, and no single driver in this morning’s reporting explains the gap between them.
Copper rose 2.28 percent to 6.51 dollars a pound, extending its hold on the weekly range while exchange stocks and Chilean supply expectations stay in the background of this morning’s mining and commodities reporting.
Precious metals kept falling. Silver fell 1.49 percent to 53.95 dollars an ounce and gold fell 1.29 percent to 4,007.90 dollars, with silver miners down 2.54 percent and gold miners down 1.82 percent. The move continues the liquidation pattern in this morning’s commodities reporting, where gold is being sold to cover equity losses and capped by the inflation expectations that high crude creates, rather than bought as a safe haven.
The cross-market read is split, not risk-on or risk-off. Energy and copper, the physical scarcity trades, rose or held; precious metals, the liquidity trade, fell; and the sharpest move of all was a positioning rebound in the market with the most crowded short. Into a week with the Bank of Canada, the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of Japan all deciding between Wednesday and Friday, the tables say the risk sits in crowded positions meeting those decisions, not in any new weekend supply shock.