There are hedge funds that specialise mainly in oil. However, there are no hedge funds that specialise mainly in trading USD or AUD or JPY or Gold or bond futures. These instruments are just as liquid. Why is oil so special that there are hedge funds that trade mainly in it? Is it easier to analyze compared to other asset classes?
I think the oil supply chain is so vast that there are so many levers to play from pipelines, to drilling, to transportation, to the various types of the commodity itself. In fx, that “supply chain” is all the other competing economies.
There are/ were hedge funds specializing in just about every asset class and sector. Currencies are the realm of Global Macro hedge funds eg George Soros and his fund Quantum, which made killing on £ & THB; to my knowledge they do not limit themselves to one currency or pair, they go after whatever is in play.
Because most institutional oil traders have an edge I'm not going to explain it but it has something to do with the Cash Market vs Futures Markets
There are hundreds of hedge funds that specialize in bonds! Plenty of them specialize in tiny corners of the bond market, for example buying entire subordinate tranches of a reorganizing company and holding the senior noteholders hostage for time in order to get more payout than strictly owed is a fairly common strategy that several funds use almost exclusively. While you may not have a fund that trades only a single currency pair you also probably don't have a hedge fund that trades only a single type of oil future. There are plenty of currency focused hedge funds as well. I'm sure there's someone out there exploiting the irrationality of people around gold as well, just not personally acquainted with any.
Could be because oil/energy has pizzazz. People don't think about the price of sugar or wheat much, but they see a reference to oil/gasoline many times per day. (??)