Gold Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators and traders continued to reduce their bullish net positions in the gold futures markets last week for an eighth 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 Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 96,550 contracts in the data reported through January 3rd. This was a weekly change of -1,793 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 98,343 net contracts.
Last week’s speculative decline kept spec net positions under the 100,000 threshold for a second straight week but was the lowest weekly drop over the last eight weeks suggesting a potential exhaustion in the selloff.
Gold 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 -117,612 contracts last week. This is a weekly change of 3,355 contracts from the total net of -120,967 contracts reported the previous week.
Gold ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the GLD ETF (NYSE:GLD) , which tracks the price of gold, closed at approximately $110.47 which was a gain of $1.91 from the previous close of $108.56, according to ETF market data from Yahoo Finance.