S&P500 Speculators Decreased Their Bullish Net Positions For 2nd Week

S&P 500 Non-Commercial Positions:

Large stock market speculators and traders cut back on their bullish net positions in the S&P500 futures markets last week for a second consecutive 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&P500 futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 4,567 contracts in the data reported through April 11th. This was a weekly decline of -2,815 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 7,382 net contracts.

Large speculative positions have now fallen by -7,803 contracts (combined total) in the past two weeks and have brought the bullish positions to their lowest level in six weeks.

S&P500 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 -14,183 contracts last week. This is a weekly gain of 4,676 contracts from the total net of -18,859 contracts reported the previous week.

S&P500 Stock Market Index:

Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the S&P500 index closed at approximately 2353.78 which was a change of -6.37 from the previous close of 2360.15, according to market data.

*COT Report: The COT data, released weekly to the public each Friday, is updated through the previous Tuesday (data is 3 days old) and shows a quick view of how large speculators or non-commercials (for-profit traders) as well as the commercial traders (hedgers & traders for business purposes) were positioned in the futures 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).