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 Investors in the United States accounted for about 85 percent of the
$3 billion-plus inflow into energy ETPs globally, ETF Securities, an
issuer of ETPs, said.
"A lot of the flows were in WTI (U.S.) crude ETPs," said Martin
Arnold, global FX and commodity strategist at ETF Securities. "It's
U.S. investors looking at the U.S. economy." Natural gas accounted
for about 25 percent of the inflows.
Oil prices have tumbled by over 55 percent since June, with the
sell-off accelerating after OPEC's decision at its November meeting
not to cut production. Some U.S. investors have taken the view the
oil price has fallen too far, and will rebound as demand picks up
and some of the excess shale oil production is curbed.
"As the crude oil price continued to slide into the end of the year,
investors have started to hunt for the bottom," said Stephen Cohen,
chief investment strategist for iShares EMEA at BlackRock. "Energy
equity ETPs saw similar flow trends."
The strong inflows into energy ETPs helped to offset the continued
outflows from gold ETPs, which remained a drag on the asset class as
a whole. Excluding gold, total net inflows amounted to $4.5 billion,
ETF Securities said. With gold, commodities had net outflows of $30
million.
This was in sharp contrast to 2013, when a record $42.9 billion was
withdrawn from commodity ETPs, and was achieved despite another year
when prices tumbled.
The S&P GSCI, a well-followed commodity index, was down 33.1 percent
in 2014 as a stronger dollar, over-supply issues and concerns about
growth in China and Europe prompted big sell-offs in commodities.
Assets under management (AUM) ended 2014 down 20.6 percent at about
$102 billion, ETF Securities said.
Arnold said almost all of the fall in AUM was due to price declines,
as flows had proved quite resilient. This was particularly the case
in the broad-basket commodity ETPs segment, which attracted some $1
billion for the year.
"Sentiment appears to be stabilizing, and the flows numbers support
this," he said. "Many commodities are now trading at or below their
marginal cost of production, attracting some longer-term value
investors."
Global commodities at end-December ($ mln)
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SECTOR DEC 2014 FLOWS 2014 ASSETS 2014 FLOWS 2014 ASSETS
FLOWS(Black (BlackRock (BlackRock) (ETF (ETF
Rock) ) Securities) Securities)
Broad/Diversified 361.5 985.8 14,261.8 1,071 12,025
Agriculture -191 -484.4 4,294.4 -471 2,835
Energy 2,474.3 3,563.2 7,764.4 3,037 6,197
Industrial Metals -87 71.8 1,755.2 -2 1,295
Gold -609.7 -4,490.8 62,144.4 -4,562 64,262
Silver -405 310.4 9,239.8 151 9,501
Other Precious Metals 4.3 -337.9 4,503.8 747 5,399
TOTAL Precious Metals -1,010.3 -4,518.3 75,888 -3,663 79,160
TOTAL COMMODITIES 1,547.5 -382 103,963.8 -30 101,514
TOTAL ex-Gold 2,157.2 4,108.8 41,819 4,532 37,252
Sources: BlackRock, ETF Securities
(Reporting by Claire Milhench, editing by David Evans)
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