Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Gold Report
Gold positions fall to +155,274 large speculator contracts
GOLD: Large futures traders and gold speculators sharply cut back on their overall bullish bets last week as positions decreased for a second straight 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 Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +155,274 contracts in the data reported through February 10th. This was a weekly change of -29,741 contracts from the previous week’s total of +185,015 net contracts that was registered on February 3rd.
The drop in the net speculator positions (-29,741 contracts) was due to a decrease in the weekly bullish positions by -29,970 contracts that offset a decline in the gold bearish positions by just -229 contracts.
The fall in the gold speculative positions represented the largest weekly decline since November and brought overall positions to the lowest level in five weeks.
Over the weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday February 3rd to Tuesday February 10th, the gold price fell for a second week from approximately $1,260.30 to $1,232.20 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.
COT Report: 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).