Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Gold Report
Speculator Positions fall slightly in latest COT data through July 29th
Gold market futures speculators decreased their overall bullish bets last week for the second time out of the last three weeks as the gold price hovers around the $1,300.00 level, 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 +139,153 contracts in the data reported through July 29th. This was a weekly change of -6,993 contracts from the previous week’s total of +146,146 net contracts that was registered on July 22nd.
The decline in the overall net speculator positions (-6,993) last week was due to a fall in the weekly bullish positions by -8,855 contracts which overtook the smaller decrease in the bearish positions of -1,862 contracts.
Last week’s pullback in bullish bets marked the second weekly fall out of the last three weeks for gold speculators. Bullish bets had recently reached their highest level since January on July 8th with a net bullish position of +150,021 contracts.
Over the weekly same reporting time-frame, from Tuesday July 22nd to Tuesday July 29th, the gold price edged lower from approximately $1,306.30 to $1,300.50 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).