Speculator Positions saw largest weekly gain since July
Gold: Large traders and futures market speculators sharply increased their overall gold bullish bets last week as gold positions rose for a fourth consecutive week to the best level since August, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial futures contracts of Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +107,984 contracts in the data reported through October 21st. This was a weekly change of +22,569 contracts from the previous week’s total of +85,415 net contracts that was registered on October 14th.
The weekly rise in the net spec positions (+22,569) last week showed the largest weekly gain since August 12th (weekly rise of +26,218) and gold positions are now at the highest level since August 26th when total positions equaled +113,169 contracts.
The positive weekly increase was due to a gain in the bullish positions by 13,549 contracts while the weekly bearish positions decreased by -9,020 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday October 14th to Tuesday October 21st, the gold price advanced from approximately $1,234.30 to $1,251.70 per ounce, according to gold futures 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).