Weekly CFTC Commitment of Traders Crude Oil Report
CFTC COT data shows speculator’s oil bets rose last week
WTI Crude Oil Non-Commercial Positions:
Futures market traders and large oil speculators raised their overall bullish bets last week for the fifth out of the last six weeks, 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 +325,706 contracts in the data reported for May 5th. This was a change of +10,862 contracts from the previous week’s total of +314,844 net contracts for the data reported through April 28th.
For the week, the standing non-commercial long positions in oil futures rose by 9,060 contracts and combined with the short positions that fell by 1,802 contracts to total the overall weekly net change of +10,862 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday April 28th to Tuesday May 5th, the WTI crude oil price moved higher from $57.06 to $60.04 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from Investing.com. Brent crude prices also rose for the week from $64.64 to $67.52 per barrel from Tuesday April 28th to Tuesday May 5th, according to price data from Investing.com.
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) added to their existing bearish positions for a net total position of -328,510 contracts through May 5th. This is a weekly change of -7,893 contracts from the total net of -320,617 contracts on April 28th.
*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).