Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Gold Report
Gold positions slipped to +131,734 large speculator contracts
GOLD: Large futures traders and gold speculators continued to pare gold bets as their overall bullish bets sharply decreased last week and fell for a third straight week, 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 +131,734 contracts in the data reported through February 17th. This was a weekly change of -23,540 contracts from the previous week’s total of +155,274 net contracts that was registered on February 10th.
The shortfall in the net speculator positions (-23,540 contracts) was due to a decrease in the weekly bullish positions by -10,915 contracts combined with a rise in the weekly bearish positions by 12,625 contracts.
The net speculator position drop was the second consecutive week of more than a 20,000 contract decline and brought the current overall level to the lowest level in six weeks.
Over the weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday February 10th to Tuesday February 17th, the gold price retreated for a third week from approximately $1,232.20 to $1,208.60 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).