S&P 500 Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders decreased their net positions in the S&P500 stock futures markets last week for a fourth 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 S&P500 futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 2,140 contracts in the data reported through January 10th. This was a weekly change of -2,488 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 4,628 net contracts.
Speculators are now at their least bullish net position since October 4th 2016 when they numbered a total of +1,708 net contracts.
S&P500 Commercial Positions:
Meanwhile, 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 -14,953 contracts last week. This is a weekly increase of 4,315 contracts from the total net of -19,268 contracts reported the previous week.
S&P500 Stock Market Index:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the S&P500 index closed at approximately 2268.89 which was a gain of 11.06 from the previous close of 2257.83, according to market data.