Exchange-traded commodities have seen over USD850m of inflows into long products since the beginning of November, following sharp declines during the July to October period, according t
Exchange-traded commodities have seen over USD850m of inflows into long products since the beginning of November, following sharp declines during the July to October period, according to provider ETF Securities.
Long oil and physically-backed gold ETCs have seen the largest inflows, accounting for 50 per cent and 35 per cent of total flows during the period.
ETF Securities says the strong rise in flows across a range of ETCs highlights investors’ increasingly positive positioning in a number of commodities and also growing demand for simple, liquid and transparent investment vehicles.
Flows into long oil ETCs have been especially robust, rising by USD40m last week alone, bringing total flows into long oil ETCs since 1 November to USD435m.
The surge in flows into long oil ETCs over the past two months, as the oil price dropped below USD50 a barrel, marks a dramatic switch in investor sentiment compared to the April to July period last year when over USD250m of flows went into ETFS Short Crude Oil, which moves inversely to the daily percent movement of the underlying, as the oil price ran up to its July peak near USD150 per barrel.
Within ETF Securities ETC platform, the largest flows have been in ETFS Crude Oil, ETFS Brent and ETFS WTI.
More recently there has been increased interest in longer dated oil ETCs such as ETFS Brent 1yr, ETFS Brent 2yr, ETFS Brent 3yr and similarly long-dated WTI oil trackers. There has also been a strong rise in flows into ETFS Leveraged Oil.
Last week Gold Bullion Securities, an ETC fully backed by physical gold bullion, received USD24m of inflows. ETF Securities physically backed gold ETCs (which also include ETFS Physical Gold) have seen over USD300m of inflows since the beginning of November, bringing total assets under management in physical gold ETCs to USD4.8bn.
ETF Securities says flows into a number of other ETCs have picked up recently. For example, last week nearly USD10m went into industrial metals such as ETFS Industrial Metals DJ-AIGCI which tracks a basket of industrial metals, ETFS Copper and ETFS Nickel.
Agriculture has seen a pick-up in flows, with Agriculture ETCs last week receiving around USD7m of inflows. Precious metals such as ETFS Physical Platinum and ETFS Physical Silver have seen more interest recently as well.
