Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Crude Oil Report
Oil Speculators overall long positions push lower as WTI falls close to $80 per barrel
Crude Oil: Futures market traders and large speculators kept on lowering their overall bullish bets in crude oil futures again last week and bets dropped for a sixteenth straight week, 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, slid to a total net position of +278,780 contracts in the data reported for October 14th. This was a change of -14,903 contracts from the previous week’s total of +293,683 net contracts for the data reported through October 7th.
For the week, standing non-commercial long positions in oil futures rose by a total of 5,983 contracts but were easily offset by the short positions that gained by 20,886 contracts to total the overall weekly net change of -14,903 contracts.
The non-commercial trader’s net position is now at the lowest standing since June 25th 2013 when the overall net positions equaled a total of +274,474 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday October 7th to Tuesday October 14th, the WTI crude oil price dropped from $88.85 to $81.84 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from investing.com. Brent crude prices, meanwhile, also declined from $92.11 to $85.41 per barrel from Tuesday October 7th to Tuesday October 14th, according to price data from investing.com.
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).