Weekly CFTC Commitment of Traders Crude Oil Report
CFTC COT data shows speculator’s edged oil bets higher last week
WTI Crude Oil Non-Commercial Positions:
Futures market traders and large oil speculators slightly raised their overall bullish bets in WTI oil futures last week, following two weeks of declining bullish bets, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial contracts of crude oil futures, traded by large speculators, traders and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +327,133 contracts in the data reported for June 16th. This was a change of +1,278 contracts from the previous week’s total of +325,855 net contracts for the data reported through June 9th.
For the week, the standing non-commercial long positions in oil futures advanced by 1,134 contracts and combined with the short positions that slid by -144 contracts to total the overall weekly net change of +1,278 contracts.
WTI Crude Oil Commercial Positions:
In the commercial positions for oil on the week, the commercials (hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes) raised their existing bearish positions to a net total position of -330,886 contracts through June 16th. This is a weekly change of -5,752 contracts from the total net amount of -325,134 contracts on June 9th.
USO Crude Oil ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday June 9th to Tuesday June 16th, the NYSE:USO United States Oil Fund LP ETF, which tracks the WTI crude oil price, rose from $20.21 to $20.26, according to ETF data from Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) Finance.
*COT Report: The weekly commitment of traders report summarizes the total trader positions for open contracts in the futures trading markets. The CFTC categorizes trader positions according to commercial hedgers (traders who use futures contracts for hedging as part of the business), non-commercials (large traders who speculate to realize trading profits) and nonreportable traders (usually small traders/speculators).