Silver Non-Commercial Positions:
Large speculators sharply decreased their net positions in the silver futures markets and decreased their bullish bets for a fifth straight week 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 Comex silver futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 43,004 contracts in the data reported through May 16th. This was a weekly decline of -10,651 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 53,655 net contracts.
Speculators have now cut their bullish positions by -62,511 contracts over the past five weeks after pushing their bets to a record high position on April 11th.
Silver 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 -57,337 contracts last week. This was a weekly rise of 11,932 contracts from the total net of -69,269 contracts reported the previous week.
Silver ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the SLV ishares ETF, which tracks the price of silver, closed at approximately $15.93 which was an increase of $0.63 from the previous close of $15.30, according to ETF financial market data.