Hedge fund managers and other large speculators increased their net long position in New York crude oil futures in the week to Sept. 8, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

Speculative long positions, or bets prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 33,112 contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Washington-based commission said Sept. 11 in its Commitments of Traders report. Net-long positions rose by 4,518 contracts, or 16 percent, from a week earlier.

“There definitely seems to be a bit of significant resistance being encountered once we get into the $70s,” said Toby Hassall, a research analyst at CWA Global Markets in Sydney.

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Tags: commodity futures trading, crude oil futures, fund-managers, futures-trading-commission, research analyst

Seekingalpha.com - The Mad Hedge Fund Trader graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Mathematics in 1974. He moved to Tokyo, Japan to join Dai Nana Securities as a research analyst of Japanese companies, becoming fluent in Japanese.

In 1976 he was appointed the Tokyo correspondent for The Economist magazine and the Financial Times. For the next seven years he published thousands of articles about the economies, companies, and leaders of every country in Asia. He was one of the first American correspondents to cover China during the cultural revolution. He reported on the American attempt to climb Mount Everest and guerilla wars throughout Southeast Asia. The major figures he interviewed included China’s Premier Deng Xiaoping, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, the PLO’s Yassir Arafat, and of course President Ronald Reagan.

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Tags: cultural revolution, deng xiaoping, economist magazine, ferdinand marcos, financial times, fund trader, guerilla wars, japanese-companies, marcos of the philippines, margaret thatcher, mount everest, president ronald reagan, research analyst, ronald-reagan, southeast asia, tokyo correspondent, tokyo-japan, university of california at los angeles, yassir arafat