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Silver Non-Commercial Positions:

Large speculators sharply decreased their net positions in the silver futures markets and decreased their bullish bets for a fifth straight week last 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 silver futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of 43,004 contracts in the data reported through May 16th. This was a weekly decline of -10,651 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 53,655 net contracts.

Speculators have now cut their bullish positions by -62,511 contracts over the past five weeks after pushing their bets to a record high position on April 11th.

Silver 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 -57,337 contracts last week. This was a weekly rise of 11,932 contracts from the total net of -69,269 contracts reported the previous week.

Silver ETF:

Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the SLV ishares ETF, which tracks the price of silver, closed at approximately $15.93 which was an increase of $0.63 from the previous close of $15.30, according to ETF financial market data.

*COT Report: 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). Find CFTC criteria here: (http://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/CommitmentsofTraders/ExplanatoryNotes/index.htm).

Article by CountingPips.com