Gold: Futures market speculators added to their overall bullish bets in the gold futures market last week for the second straight week as the weekly increase was the most since March, 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 +78,295 contracts in the data reported through June 17th. This was a weekly change of +17,168 contracts from the previous week’s total of +61,127 net contracts that was registered on June 10th.
The rise in the net bullish speculator positions last week was mostly due to a decline in bearish positions held by gold speculators. These bearish or short positions fell by 14,683 contracts while the bullish positions for the week rose by 2,485 contracts. The overall net gain of +17,168 contracts was the largest one week increase since March 18th when there as a weekly rise of +17,924 contracts.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday June 10th to Tuesday June 17th, the gold price advanced for a second week from $1,260.10 to $1,272.00 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).