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Commodities: US cocoa, cotton futures fly amid jump in net longs
Soft commodities and energy futures were in big demand on Monday, amid news-flow related specifically to each category and as traders waited for the Trump administration to release the details of its soon-to-be -announced tariffs on steel and aluminium.
Apparently feeding demand for agricultural commodities, the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission's latest weekly Commitment of Traders report - published after the close of markets on 2 March - showed that non-commercial investors had upped their net long position to 214,492 contracts, versus 165,932 at the end of the latest reference week.
That saw the May 2018 wheat contract on CBoT gain 1.85% to $5.0925 a bushel come 2038 GMT on Monday.
In parallel, similarly-dated cocoa futures on ICE flew higher by 5.75% to $2,446 per metric tonne - hitting a 52-week high of $2,459 on an intra-day basis.
The latter was also the contract's best level in almost a year-and-a-half.
ICE-traded cocoa #2 futures also found a big bid, jumping 3.83% to $8.523 a pound.
Among base metals, three-month LME futures dipped from $6,924 per metric tonne at Friday's close to $6,886 per tonne as of Monday's closing bell.
"Trade war fears continue to overhang the markets, gathering momentum and putting further pressure on equities and causing headwinds for LME metals which were all trading lower today," said analysts at Sucden Financial.
On a related note, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said no countries would be granted exemptions from the steel and aluminium tariffs the details of which were expected to be announced later in the week.
Over the in oil patch, news of shrinking stockpiles of oil at Cushing, Oklahoma sent April 2018 West Texas Intermediate futures sharply higher.
Stoking the buying pressure, market commentary was referencing a sourced report from Bloomberg according to which data-provider Genscape's bi-weekly tally had revealed a drop in inventories at the pricing point for the WTI benchmark.
That news more than offset the impact from an International Energy Agency's study projecting that America's crude output would satisfy 80% of the increase in global demand for oil to 2020.
However, closer to 2023 the rich world's energy watchdog expected market balances to tighten, hence its call for increased investment to offset natural rates of decline at oilfields.
To take note of, traders were also expectant ahead of the start, on Monday, of IHS Markit's CERAWeek industry conference.
The Bloomberg commodity index was higher by 0.61% to 88.68, alongside even as the US dollar spot index edged higher by 0.11% to 90.03.