Punters long of Gold, Silver and Oil Stocks

Commodity fever is continuing to grip spread betting traders, with many people holding large up-bets in gold and silver and others chasing the in-fashion oil exploration stocks.

Capital Spreads said that its clients were very long of precious metals at the start of this week, with punters also holding onto smaller long positions in other primary products such as wheat, coffee, copper and natural gas.

IG Index said that many punters were bullish of gold on a long term view, and it was also seeing a lot of interest in oil shares, such as White Nile, Regal Petroleum and Sibir Energy.

Capital said punters were buying into both oil stocks and banks.

A fortnight ago, many spread betting punters were short of the FTSE100 index, looking for a setback from the 5000 level.

Even though that barrier has been well and truly breached, a lot of people are still clinging onto their shorts from below that level, and others have opened down-bets from further up, according to Capital Spreads.

IG said that its punters were tending to go short of the Dow each time it approached the 10,870 barrier.

As far as foreign exchange bets are concerned, traders seem to have moved from a trending philosophy to a tactical one, looking to buy the dollar at the bottom of its range against the euro and sell it at the top.

Sentiment however remains fairly bullish on sterling, with people anticipating another UK interest rate rise.

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