Silver Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators decreased their bullish net positions in the silver futures markets for a second week last week following a run of nine straight weekly gains, 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 silver futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 82,878 contracts in the data reported through March 14th. This was a weekly shortfall of -10,575 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 93,453 net contracts.
Silver speculators had pushed their bullish net positions up to their highest level since July 26th 2016 when net positions totaled 96,077 contracts before reducing their bets the past two weeks.
Silver 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 -97,999 contracts last week. This is a weekly change of 7,863 contracts from the total net of -105,862 contracts reported the previous week.
Silver ETF (NYSE:SLV):
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the SLV ishares ETF, which tracks the price of silver, closed at approximately $15.99 which was a decline of $-0.56 from the previous close of $16.55, according to ETF financial market data.