S&P 500 Mini Non-Commercial Speculator Positions:
Stock market speculators raised their net positions in the S&P 500 Mini futures markets this 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 S&P 500 Mini futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 166,455 contracts in the data reported through Tuesday January 23rd. This was a weekly gain of 44,005 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 122,450 net contracts.
The speculators of the mini SP500 contracts have now increased their bets for a second straight week (+89,042 contract gain over 2 weeks) and for the fifth out of the past six weeks.
S&P 500 Mini Commercial Positions:
Meanwhile, the commercial traders position, hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes, totaled a net position of -132,091 contracts on the week. This was a weekly increase of 27,174 contracts from the total net of -159,265 contracts reported the previous week.
SPY (NYSE:SPY) ETF:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the SPY ETF, which tracks the price of S&P 500 Index, closed at approximately $283.29 which was a rise of $6.32 from the previous close of $276.97, according to unofficial market data.