Gold Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders increased their net positions in the gold futures markets last week following three weeks of declines, 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 196,980 contracts in the data reported through October 25th. This was a weekly change of 17,362 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 179,618 net contracts.
Gold speculative positions have now been under the +200,000 net contract level for three straight weeks.
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 -217,599 contracts last week. This is a weekly change of -14,928 contracts from the total net of -202,671 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 $121.47 which was an advance of $1.05 from the previous close of $120.42, 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).