Crude Oil Speculators Increase Bearish Bets
Zachary Storella | Jun 29, 2014 01:36AM ET
Oil Speculators overall long positions rise to new highest level of the year
Crude Oil: Large futures market traders and speculators slightly increased their overall bullish bets in crude oil futures last week for third straight week and to a new high level of the year, 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, primarily traded by large speculators and hedge funds, edged up to a total net position of +458,969 contracts in the data reported for June 24th. This was a change of +1,813 contracts from the previous week’s total of +457,156 net contracts for the data reported through June 17th.
For the week, long positions increased by just 2,955 contracts while short positions declined by only 1,142 contracts to show an overall net change of +1,813 contracts.
The rise in bullish positions pushes the overall bullish standing to the highest level of the year for a second straight week.
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday June 17th to Tuesday June 24th, the crude oil price advanced from $105.87 to $106.03 per barrel, according to Nymex futures price data from investing.com. Brent crude prices, meanwhile, also showed a rise from $113.45 to $114.46 per barrel from Tuesday June 17th to Tuesday June 24th, according to prices 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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