Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Crude Oil Report
Crude Oil: Large futures market traders and speculators sharply raised their overall bullish bets in crude oil futures last week for a 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 contracts of crude oil futures, primarily traded by large speculators and hedge funds, advanced to a total net position of +423,136 contracts in the data reported for May 27th. This was a change of +12,928 contracts from the previous week’s total of +410,208 net contracts for the data reported through May 20th.
Last week’s rise in bullish bets brought non-commercial net positions to the highest level since March 4th when bullish net positions equaled +425,818 contracts. For the week, long positions rose by 18,543 contracts while short positions increased by 5,615 contracts to show an overall net change of +12,928 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday May 20th to Tuesday May 27th, the crude oil price advanced from $102.33 to $104.11 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from investing.com. Brent crude prices, meanwhile, also showed a rise from $109.81 to $110.22 per barrel from Tuesday May 20th to Tuesday May 27th, according to prices 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).