Small speculators more than doubled their net length in gold futures ahead of the ECB’s quantitative easing announcement on Thursday:
This is the largest net long position in gold futures that small speculators have had since early July which happened to coincide with an intermediate price peak for the yellow metal. Meanwhile, the euro price of gold surged above €1,160/oz and closed up roughly 5% on the week:
Gold in euro terms is up over 18% year-to-date.
A large downturn in US refinery utilization has led to the largest spike in oil inventories since 2011:
This glut of oil inventories has led to a steep contango in oil futures with the December 2016 WTI Crude futures contract trading ~30% above the front month contract. The drop off in refinery utilization has also resulted in a sharp spike higher in the refining crack spread:
