WTI Crude Oil Non-Commercial Positions:
Futures market traders and large oil speculators sharply boosted their overall bullish bets in WTI oil futures last week following seven straight weeks of declining bullish bets, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial contracts of crude oil futures, traded by large speculators, traders and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +307,500 contracts in the data reported for August 16th. This was a change of +49,250 contracts from the previous week’s total of +258,250 net contracts for the data reported through August 9th.
The weekly advance by +49,250 contracts brought total speculative bullish positions back over the +300,000 threshold and marked the largest one week rise since May 17th when positions jumped by a total of 76,809 contracts.
WTI Crude Oil Commercial Positions:
In the commercial positions for oil on the week, the commercials (hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes) increased their existing bearish positions to a net total position of -292,429 contracts through August 16th. This is a weekly change of -34,222 contracts from the total net amount of -258,207 contracts on August 9th.
USO Crude Oil ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday August 9th to Tuesday August 16th, the USO Oil ETF, which tracks the WTI crude oil price, advanced from $10.07 to $10.92, according to ETF data for the USO United States Oil Fund (NYSE:USO) LP ETF.
COT Report: 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).