Crude Oil: Large futures market traders and speculators decreased their overall bullish bets in crude oil futures last week for a fourth consecutive week and to the lowest level since February, 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, primarily traded by large speculators and hedge funds, declined to a total net position of +371,444
contracts in the data reported for July 22nd. This was a change of -28,159 contracts from the previous week’s total of +399,603 net contracts for the data reported through July 15th.
For the week, standing long positions declined by 22,155 contracts while short positions advanced by 6,004 contracts to show an overall weekly net change of -28,159 contracts. Non-commercial positions are now at the lowest level since February 4th when net positions equaled +360,217 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday July 15th to Tuesday July 22nd, the crude oil price rose from $99.96 to $102.39 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from investing.com. Brent crude prices, meanwhile, also showed a gain from $106.88 to $107.33 per barrel from Tuesday July 15th to Tuesday July 22nd, according to price data from investing.com.
