David Fickling, Columnist

Hedge Funds Are Suffering From Metal Fatigue

They’re selling copper for the first time since Trump’s election, and that’s not all.

July 23, 2018 at 5:35 AM UTC

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Buckling.
Photographer: Martin Leissl/Bloomberg

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Commodity funds are going soft.

The investors who helped bid up the price of LME copper to a four-year high of $7,348 a metric ton last month are beating a path to the door. Holdings of investment funds in Chicago copper futures this month crashed to a net short position for the first time since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, having hit a record net long of 125,376 contracts as recently as September.