Gold Speculators Bullish Positions Decreased For 4th Week

Chicago (Mar 1)  GOLD: Gold speculators and large futures traders decreased their gold bullish bets last week as the net long positions declined for a fourth 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 Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +126,171 contracts in the data reported through February 24th. This was a weekly change of -5,563 contracts from the previous week’s total of +131,734 net contracts that was registered on February 17th.

The shortfall in the net speculator positions (-5,563 contracts) was due to a decrease in the weekly bullish positions by -3,705 contracts combined with a rise in the weekly bearish positions by 1,858 contracts.

The net speculator position shortfall last week follows two weeks of strong declines of more than a 20,000 contracts. The overall gold speculator positions are now at the lowest level since January 6th when net positions totaled +122,178 contracts.

Over the weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday February 17th to Tuesday February 24th, the gold price edged lower to decrease for a fourth week from approximately $1,208.60 to $1,204.70 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.

Source: Investing.com