Doubts over growth in oil consumption during 2024 prompted hedge funds and other investors to resume selling petroleum futures and options, especially those tied to crude, after two weeks of purchases, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Managers have now been on a selling spree for 11 of the past 13 weeks broken only by a two-week spell of repurchasing before year-end.
The equivalent of 66m barrels in the six most important petroleum and options contracts were sold during the seven-day period ending 2 January, with crude accounting for 63m of that total split almost equally between NYMEX (33m) and and ICE WTI (30 million).
Nearly all of the sales came from the establishment of new bearish short positions (+59m barrels), rather than the liquidation of existing bullish longs (-3m), according to Bloomberg, with the renewed selling putting prices under downward pressure again.
