Tag Archives: brent crude

ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

Black Gold v. Yellow Metal: Macro-Strategy Perspective

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As if it were a segment in “Orange is the New Black,” the price correlation between Crude Oil (aka Black Gold) and the Yellow Metal continues to swing like a chandelier in a windy mansion. Below extract courtesy of Neil Azous, from today’s a.m. edition of Rareview Macro’s Sight Beyond Sight summarizes the current correlation in a crisp way…

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro LLC
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro LLC

There are two assets being watched closely right now – Brent Crude Oil and the Euro Exchange Rate.

Firstly, Brent Crude Oil is showing the largest negative risk-adjusted return in Commodities. This morning, the “barrel” has broken through yesterday’s low and overall has now retraced over 50% of the Iraq/ISIS move higher seen in June. Below is a regression analysis between Brent Crude Oil and Gold for three time periods related to Iraq/ISIS: Before, Height, and Current.

Gold was trading at its lower point on June 2nd and the correlation (i.e. red asterisk on chart) to Brent Crude Oil was negative. On June 19th, the correlation was the most positive when Brent Crude Oil was at its highest level. Today, the correlation is on the cusp of swinging back to negative territory. We highlight this because the same pattern has been seen before, with the height on March 14th and after the Ukraine-Russia crisis. And what happened next? Gold dropped by -10% over the next 45 days.

By the way, it was reported that assets in the SPDR Gold Trust (symbol: GLD) rose +1.4% to 796.39 metric tons in the two sessions through yesterday. To put that in context, that is the largest two-day gain since November 2011 and it is just one example of the new found retail length in Gold. The other was in CFTC futures positioning which professionals use to gain exposure. Continue reading →

ETF News, People Profiles

Four New Brent Crude ETPs

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ETF Securities (ETFS) has expanded its Brent Crude exchange traded products offering against a background of rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

The issuer unveiled four ETPs on the London Stock Exchange, as Brent Crude’s importance as the new global benchmark for oil rises. West Texas Intermediate has been beset with local logistical issues that have seen it move to a significant discount to Brent.

The range of ETPs provide investors with long, leveraged, short and forward exposures to the Brent oil price and complement its existing offering of 1-month, 1-year, 2-year and 3-year exposures.

In a recent poll by ETFS, three quarters of respondents said they expected tensions in the Middle East to escalate while two thirds said this would occur within the first half of this year. The vast majority of these respondents also said this would impact their asset allocation decisions.

The ETFS Brent Crude oil ETPs are issued by ETFS Commodity Securities Limited, a Jersey-based special purpose vehicle.

The vehicles track the performance of the Brent Crude sub-indices of the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index, via fully funded collateralised swaps.

Exposure to Brent Crude is obtained via multiple swap counterparties, including UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch acting through Merrill Lynch Commodities.