Gold market futures speculators edged their overall bullish bets higher last week after bets had declined for the first time in six weeks the previous 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 +146,146 contracts in the data reported through July 22nd. This was a weekly change of +3,688 contracts from the previous week’s total of +142,458 net contracts that was registered on July 15th.
The rise in the overall net speculator positions (+3,688) last week was due to a decrease in the weekly bearish positions by 5,803 contracts which offset a smaller decrease in the bullish positions by 2,115 contracts.
Last week’s gain in bullish bets marked the sixth weekly increase out of the last seven weeks for gold speculators.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday July 15th to Tuesday July 22nd, the gold price rose from approximately $1,297.10 to $1,306.30 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.
Dislcaimer: 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).