Gold Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders continued to offload positions in the gold futures markets last week for a fifth consecutive week, 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 129,311 contracts in the data reported through December 13th. This was a weekly change of -7,069 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 136,380 net contracts.
Speculators have now dropped their net bullish positions for a fifth week to the lowest bullish level since February 16th when net positions stood at +117,360 contracts.
Gold 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 -149,886 contracts last week. This is a weekly advance of 5,058 contracts from the total net of -154,944 contracts reported the previous week.
Gold ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the GLD (NYSE:GLD) ETF, which tracks the price of gold, closed at approximately $110.45 which was a change of $-0.98 from the previous close of $111.43, according to ETF market data from Yahoo Finance.