While the CFTC Commitment of Traders report tends to be very useful, some of the date in the report can be strange from time to time. One of these strange occurrences is the divergence between positioning in Nymex Crude Oil futures and Nymex Heating Oil futures.
The reason I tend to follow Heating Oil COT, is because Heating Oil correlates very closely to Brent Crude (global barometer of oil prices) and the COT report of hedge fund positioning does a good job of giving contrarian buy and sell signals.
Chart 1: Brent Crude Oil together with Heating Oil COT report
The chart above of Heating Oil COT, shows how reduced net long positions or even outright net short positions tend to be good signals for buy opportunities when it comes to Brent Crude. The current positioning is one of the most extreme in decades (confirming very low Public Opinion sentiment). What does this tell us about the current consolidation triangle setup in Brent Crude prices?