WTI Crude Oil Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders sharply added to their net bullish positions in the WTI crude oil futures markets last week for a third consecutive week, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial contracts of WTI crude futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 422,767 contracts in the data reported through December 13th. This was a weekly boost of 45,141 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 377,626 net contracts.
WTI speculator positions are now at the most bullish level since July 8th 2014 when net positions totaled +424,887 contracts.
WTI Crude Oil 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 -447,841 contracts last week. This is a weekly decline of -48,480 contracts from the total net of -399,361 contracts reported the previous week.
USO (NYSE:USO) Crude Oil ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the USO Crude Oil ETF, which tracks the price of WTI crude oil, closed at approximately $11.73 which was a gain of $0.44 from the previous close of $11.29, according to market data from Yahoo Finance.