Gold Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders continued to decrease their net positions in the gold futures markets last week 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 151,570 contracts in the data reported through November 29th. This was a weekly shortfall of -15,515 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 167,085 net contracts.
Gold speculative positions have been falling sharply for three straight weeks and have now declined to the lowest standing since February 23rd when speculative positions totaled 144,978 contracts.
Gold Commercial Positions:
The commercial traders position, categorized by the CFTC as hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes, totaled a net position of -167,823 contracts last week. This is a weekly change of 24,349 contracts from the total net of -192,172 contracts reported the previous week.
Gold ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the GLD (NYSE:GLD) ETF, which tracks the price of gold, closed at approximately $113.27 which was a drop of $-2.27 from the previous close of $115.54, according to ETF market data from Yahoo Finance.
*COT Report: The COT data, released weekly to the public each Friday, is updated through the previous Tuesday (data is 3 days old) and shows a quick view of how large speculators or non-commercials (for-profit traders) as well as the commercial traders (hedgers & traders for business purposes) were positioned in the futures 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).