Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Gold Report
Speculator Positions decline as Gold price remains under $1,300.00
Gold market traders and speculators cut back on their overall bullish bets last week for a second consecutive week and to the lowest level in over two months, 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 +113,169 contracts in the data reported through August 26th. This was a weekly change of -24,807 contracts from the previous week’s total of +137,976 net contracts that was registered on August 19th.
The overall decline in speculator positions marked a weekly decrease the second week and pushed bullish levels down to the lowest standing since June 17th when positions totaled +78,295 contracts.
The weekly decline in the net speculator positions (-24,807) last week was due to a decrease in the weekly bullish positions by -11,824 contracts combined with a rise in the bearish positions by +12,983 contracts.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday August 19th to Tuesday August 26th, the gold price fell from approximately $1,296.70 to $1,285.20 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.
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).