Monday, February 28, 2011

Index funds hold HUGE long positions in commodities!

Here is the latest data from the CFTC. All figures are in thousands of futures contracts.



As you can see, index funds are long 477,000 contracts of WTI crude. That's the equivalent of 477 million barrels. The U.S. consumes about 18.6 million barrels per day, so index funds hold about an entire month's worth of consumption. They're just sitting on it. You wonder why prices are going up?

Look at corn, it's even more unbelievable.

Index funds hold 2 billion bushels of corn! That equals about 60 million tons or nearly HALF THE CURRENT 145 MILLION TON GLOBAL STOCKS OF CORN!!

And you wonder why prices are going up?


3 comments:

Matt Franko said...

this probably does not include the positions outside of the US exchanges under the reg. of the US CFTC?

London, Dubai, Switzerland probably have even more hoarding going on.

mike norman said...

Right, Matt. So it's WAY bigger.

googleheim said...

Ok let me clarify for Red Rock :

After 9/11 the economy tanked for reasons of 9/11 but also because in general things were going south anyway since the budget was balanced and all that.

Bush and his cronies went out and asked everyone to go shopping in the name of patriotism and all that.

Now, we have a worse situation, and NO WHERE are the Bushes, the Tea Party wackos, and anti-semitic Austrian Economic dingle berries are found asking Americans, the institutions, the states, and other entities to come out and spend and to shop in the name of patriotism.

Why ? because they are cornering Obama ( or trying to ) just like they did with Carter ( who did a great job of reducing spending which is why the economy tanked with him at guard ).

Why are they cornering Obama ? one of the reasons is yes that he is black, that he is probably a muslim, that he is a socialist, that he is spending too much money.

SO MR RED ROCK READ UP AND SHUT UP.