WTI Crude Oil Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders continued to push their bullish net positions higher in the WTI crude oil futures markets last 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 508,456 contracts in the data reported through February 14th. This was a weekly gain of 31,466 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 476,990 net contracts.
Speculators have now increased their net bullish position for the fourth week out of the last five and gone from slightly under +300,000 net bullish contracts in late November to above +500,000 contracts in February.
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, raised their bearish net position to -526,417 contracts last week. This was a weekly change of -21,934 contracts from the total net of -504,483 contracts reported the previous week.
USO Crude Oil ETF (NYSE:USO):
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 $11.38 which was a rise of $0.19 from the previous close of $11.19, according to ETF market data.