Crude Oil Speculators Cut Back Bullish Positions
Zachary Storella | Aug 18, 2014 01:37AM ET
Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Crude Oil Report
Crude Oil: Futures market traders and large non-commercial speculators continued to decrease their overall bullish bets in crude oil futures last week for a seventh straight week and to the lowest level since December, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial contracts of crude oil futures, traded by large speculators, traders and hedge funds, declined to a total net position of +324,066 contracts in the data reported for August 12th. This was a change of -23,138 contracts from the previous week’s total of +347,204 net contracts for the data reported through August 5th.
For the week, standing non-commercial long positions in oil futures dropped by a total of -17,213 contracts while the short positions showed a gain of 5,925 contracts to total an overall weekly net change of -23,138 contracts.
The non-commercial trader’s net positions have now fallen to the lowest bullish level since December 3rd 2013 when net positions equaled +320,848 contracts.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday August 5th to Tuesday August 12th, the crude oil price was virtually unchanged from $97.38 to $97.37 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from investing.com. Brent crude prices, meanwhile, edged lower from $104.61 to $103.89 per barrel from Tuesday August 5th to Tuesday August 12th, according to price data from investing.com.
Disclaimer: The weekly commitment of traders report summarizes the total trader positions for open contracts in the futures trading markets. The CFTC categorizes trader positions according to commercial hedgers (traders who use futures contracts for hedging as part of the business), non-commercials (large traders who speculate to realize trading profits) and nonreportable traders (usually small traders/speculators).
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