Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Gold Report
Speculator Positions fall for third out of last four weeks
Gold market speculators and large traders decreased their overall bullish bets last week to the lowest level in approximately 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 +137,976 contracts in the data reported through August 19th. This was a weekly change of -9,705 contracts from the previous week’s total of +147,681 net contracts that was registered on August 12th.
The overall decline in speculator positions marked a weekly decrease in three out of the last four weeks and brought bullish levels down to the lowest standing since June 24th when positions equaled +120,859 contracts.
The weekly fall in the net speculator positions (-9,705) last week was due to a pull back in the weekly bullish positions by -7,479 contracts combined with an increase in the bearish positions by +2,226 contracts.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday August 12th to Tuesday August 19th, the gold price traded lower from approximately $1,310.60 to $1,296.70 per ounce, according to gold futures price data 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).