Stephen Briese: 200-days Oil Supply Held Long by Speculators (Audio Interview)

Stephen Briese, a highly regarded commodities trading expert, independent commodities analyst, author of The Commitments of Traders Bible (2008), editor of http://www.commitmentsoftraders.org/, and an advisor for JovInvestment Management's Horizons Global Contrarian Fund, says, for example, that large investors are sitting (naked) on roughly 200-days worth of crude oil, and the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) knows it.

GreenLightAdvisor.com (now AdvisorAnalyst.com) interviewed Stephen Briese, and here is an excerpt.

You may hear the entire interview by clicking the 'play' button on the audio bar below.

"I follow the Commitment of Traders reports and what we see there is that the producers and users who are hedging in the market, the 'negative feedback traders' - the higher prices go, the more they sell [of the commodities], and they were selling at record levels last September, indicating that they were fully hedged." Briese says.

"Now those hedged traders have continued to sell all the way up, and historically they have defended their markets by doing that, but I think that all of the price increases since September have been speculative."

Under CFTC rules however, large investors who are not handling the commodities are not entitled to an exemption allowing them to trade in the commodities.

Commodity Index Funds, such as the popular S&P GSCI (S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index) have gotten such exemptions, allowing investors to pile in this way.

Briese says the unwinding of these positions could have dire consequences for investors, large and small.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW:

Stephen Briese Interview - June 19, 2008

Stephen Briese, CommitmentofTraders.org, June 19, 2008,

9 min. 18 sec.

About the Commitment of Traders reports: 
The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is a very useful tool to use when trading commodities, yet most traders don’t know how to properly use this gem of weekly information. Steve Briese is considered an expert in this field of study and he gives the readers of The Commitments of Traders Bible a logical understanding of how the professionals move the commodity markets and how you can take advantage of those opportunities.