Gold: Gold market futures speculators sharply increased their overall bullish bets in the gold futures market last week and raised their bullish positions for 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 +120,859 contracts in the data reported through June 24th. This was a weekly change of +42,564 contracts from the previous week’s total of +78,295 net contracts that was registered on June 17th.
The strong increase in the net bullish speculator positions for the week was due to a rise in bullish positions paired with an almost equal decline in the bearish positions held by gold speculators. The bearish or short positions fell by 21,183 contracts while the bullish or long positions for the week rose by 21,381 contracts to equal a weekly net gain of +42,564 contracts.
The overall bullish standing is the highest level since March 18th when net bullish positions equaled 136,814 contracts.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday June 17th to Tuesday June 24th, the gold price rose for a third week from approximately $1,272.00 to $1,321.30 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.
Disclaimer: 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).