Hedge funds slash bullish wagers on gold over Trump election win
Hedge funds and other large speculators boosted net-long positions by 11% to 197,362 as of Nov. 12, the lowest in 14 weeks.
JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), the largest US bank, has reportedly attracted the interest of several pension funds and even rival trading houses for its physical commodities operations, which the group decided to shed less than three months ago.
According to The Wall Street Journal, interested parties have signed non-disclosure agreements to review the offer documents that value the assets of the physical commodities business at $3.3 billion, and state it produces $750 million in yearly income before compensation costs.
The firm, which spent five years and billions of dollars building the banking world’s biggest commodity desk, may consider bids for either the entire physical commodities business or separate divisions, reports FT.com (subs. required). These units include base metals, coal, North American power, North American natural gas, European power and gas and Henry Bath, the metal warehousing group. The most valuable of tem is global crude oil, which JP Morgan values at $1.7 billion.
Pushed by higher capital levels and tougher regulation, the US financial giant joins other banks such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank in a retreat that seems to mark the end of an era in which global investment banks rushed to take advantage of the commodity prices boom.
The bank might also be setting a trend, analysts think, as the first big player to exit physical commodities entirely may be followed by banks that face similar pressures, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
JPMorgan will be the first Dow member and the first bank to report third-quarter results on Friday, formally kicking off earnings season.
Image by epicharmus/Flickr
2 Comments
Sven
Who oh who, will be left holding the bag? This whole deal is shady. But so is nearly everything that comes out of JPM.
frankinca
They seem to be still holding on to their precious metals business which gold bugs and silver fish are concerned with. Hope they will get rid of those businesses soon and let the market be made by the non-bank investors like the Hunt brothers ( Ha ha)