Gold Speculators Sharply Dropped Bullish Bets This Week

New York (Oct 6)  Large precious metals speculators sharply cut back on their bullish net positions in the Gold futures markets this week after having previously pushed bets to over a three-year high, 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 Gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 268,993 contracts in the data reported through Tuesday October 1st. This was a weekly change of -43,451 net contracts (-13.9 percent) from the previous week which had a total of 312,444 net contracts.

The week’s net position was the result of the gross bullish position (longs)falling by -47,593 contracts (to a weekly total of 322,800 contracts) while the gross bearish position (shorts) decreased by a lesser amount of -4,142 contracts for the week (to a total of 53,807 contracts).

Gold speculators sharply decreased their bullish bets this week following two weeks of rising bullish positions. The drop by over -40,000 contracts was the largest one-week decline since April 16th and brought the overall net position back down to the lowest level of the past nine weeks. Last week, bullish bets had ascended to a total over +312,000 contracts which marked the highest level since July 5th of 2016, a period of one hundred and sixty-eight weeks.

Gold Commercial Positions:

The commercial traders position, hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes, totaled a net position of -303,688 contracts on the week. This was a weekly boost of 41,457 contracts from the total net of -345,145 contracts reported the previous week.

Gold Futures:

Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the Gold Futures (Front Month) closed at approximately $1489.00 which was a drop of $-51.20 from the previous close of $1540.20, according to unofficial market data.

Investing.com