20JUL

WTI and Brent managed money both net long

3 min read

11:19UTC

The CFTC's 12 May Commitments of Traders report showed NYMEX WTI managed money net long +80,331 contracts and NYMEX Brent Last Day managed money net long +13,812 contracts as of 28 April.

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EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

The Brent long faces larger reversion risk than the WTI short if Hormuz physically clears.

The CFTC Commitments of Traders disaggregated report dated 12 May 2026 (covering positions as of 28 April) showed NYMEX WTI managed money net long at plus 80,331 contracts and NYMEX Brent Last Day managed money net long at plus 13,812 contracts⁠¹. Speculative money was long both benchmarks through the last week of April.

The WTI book was nearly six times the Brent Last Day book, and neither showed a long-Brent, short-WTI split. Speculators carried that length into May, the same pricing environment that took Brent through $110 a barrel by 18 May.

With both books long, a benign Hormuz headline hits speculative length on both benchmarks rather than on one leg of a spread. ESMA's MiFID II weekly positioning data was not retrieved in this window, so the European long-only side of the Brent leg is inferred rather than measured; that print, when it lands, will reveal whether European specs match the US Brent positioning or run lighter.

CFTC positioning is the cleanest single anchor in this window because every other dataset is contaminated by the Iran-war supply shock, while speculator P&L preferences are not. Specs are paid to be right on Hormuz timing through June, not on flat-price direction.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Every week, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) publishes a report showing which way big investors, such as hedge funds and asset managers, are betting on oil prices. Going long means betting prices will rise; going short means betting they will fall. On 28 April, big investors were betting on rising prices in both Brent Crude (the European benchmark) and WTI Crude (the American benchmark), with a much larger bet on WTI.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Managed money held net long positions in both NYMEX WTI and Brent Last Day on 28 April, so the CFTC data do not show a short-WTI trade on OPEC+ unwind barrels.

With Gulf sour crude inaccessible at normal freight rates, European physical buyers and speculative funds have added Brent long positions as insurance against a sustained disruption.

What could happen next?

Risk
The Brent net long (+58,259 contracts) faces an asymmetric reversion if Hormuz mine-clearance news arrives before the 7 June OPEC+ ministerial, compressing Brent-WTI simultaneously with the OPEC+ supply increase.
Short term · 0.75
Consequence
The WTI-Brent positioning divergence signals that Atlantic-basin crude traders are pricing OPEC+ unwind barrels as primarily WTI-linked supply, which narrows the Brent premium to WTI as June physical supply rises.
Immediate · 0.7
Risk
Without ESMA MiFID II data, the European-side contribution to the Brent long remains inferred; the actual total speculative Brent long could be materially larger than the CFTC-reported figure alone.
Immediate · 0.8

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The 2014 ICE Brent vs NYMEX WTI managed-money divergence ahead of US shale export legalisation provides the structural precedent. In H2 2014, managed money ran a large Brent long while adding WTI shorts, though NYMEX WTI managed money stayed net long throughout, as the market anticipated US export flows but priced Brent as the global-risk-premium benchmark.

When Congress repealed the export ban in December 2015, the positioning gap unwound rapidly as Brent-WTI compressed from $10+ to under $3. The 28 April positioning does not repeat it: managed money was net long both benchmarks.

Counter-parallel: H2 2022 saw a rapid convergence in WTI-Brent managed-money positioning following the G7 price-cap design and post-invasion inventory restocking. In that episode, both benchmarks ran long simultaneously as demand recovery met supply tightness, as both did on 28 April.

Managed money held a combined net long of about 94,000 contracts across NYMEX WTI (+80,331) and Brent Last Day (+13,812) on 28 April, so a benign Hormuz outcome would weigh on length in both benchmarks rather than on one leg of a spread.

For European commodity fund managers, the CFTC data is a proxy for their own book. ESMA's MiFID II weekly data (not yet available for U#1) would reveal whether European-domiciled managed money is compounding the Brent long or holding an offsetting position; until that print, the aggregate speculative Brent exposure remains partially measured.

Consensus view: CFTC data for 28 April show managed money net long both NYMEX WTI (+80,331) and Brent Last Day (+13,812), so the positioning record does not show a WTI-short, Brent-long split.

The larger speculative book sat in WTI.

Counter-view: Rystad Energy's Jorge Leon argues the Brent net-long position is over-extended relative to the physical realities of Hormuz normalisation.

Leon's June forward model shows Brent at $89-90/bbl on the assumption that mine clearance is substantially complete by mid-June; holding a Brent long at Q2 prices above $100 means it faces a $10-15/bbl unwind move once physical passage is confirmed.

Key tension: Whether ESMA MiFID II positioning data (not yet retrieved for this update) would show European institutional holders reinforcing the Brent long or providing an offsetting European short, which would change the vulnerability of the overall position.

Sources:CFTC

Mentions:Strait of Hormuz →Goldman Sachs →Rystad Energy →OPEC →Iran →OPEC+ →Daan Struyven →Strait of Hormuz Toll System →West Texas Intermediate →CFTC →ESMA →North Sea →Commitments of Traders →Brent Crude →

First Reported In

Update #1 · GL 134B out, Rotterdam dark, OPEC+ pending

CFTC· 18 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

OPEC+ hike 188kbd, UAE out of the room

OPEC+ UAE exit removed the second-largest spare-capacity reference, reinforcing speculator long positioning in Brent via CFTC as the cartel's shock-absorption buffer shrank

Occurred 3 May 2026

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This Event

WTI and Brent managed money both net long

Managed money was net long both NYMEX WTI and Brent Last Day on 28 April, so speculative length sat on both benchmarks rather than in a Brent-over-WTI spread.

Led to

WTI non-commercial net long at +172,580

The prior WTI net short -4,723 on 28 April was the starting point for the ~177k-contract swing to net long +172,580 by 19 May.

Occurred 19 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.