Copper Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders slightly decreased their net positions in the copper 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 futures contracts of copper futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 46,499 contracts in the data reported through January 17th. This was a weekly fall of -1,204 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 47,703 net contracts.
Speculative positions have been down for four out of the last five weeks since December 13th when copper positions completed a run of seven straight weeks of gains.
Copper 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 -49,272 contracts last week. This is a weekly rise of 827 contracts from the total net of -50,099 contracts reported the previous week.
Copper ETN:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the JJC iPath Bloomberg Copper ETN (NYSE:JJC), which tracks the price of copper, closed at approximately $30.12 which was a slight bump of $0.02 from the previous close of $30.10, according to financial market data.