By CountingPips.com
Weekly CFTC Net Speculator Report
GOLD: Large futures market traders and speculators increased their overall bullish bets in gold futures 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 Comex gold futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of +85,227 contracts in the data reported through April 29th. This was a change of +3,394 contracts from the previous week’s total of +81,833 net contracts on April 22nd.
The gold non-commercial net positions had fallen for four straight weeks through April 15th before turning around with small gains the past two weeks.
Over the weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday April 22nd to Tuesday April 29th, the gold price advanced from $1,284.90 to $1,296.20 per ounce, according to gold futures price data from investing.com.
Last 6 Weeks of Large Trader Non-Commercial Positions
| Date | Open Interest | Long Specs | Short Specs | Net Non-Commercials | Weekly Change | Gold Price |
| 03/25/2014 | 398264 | 169083 | 51766 | 117317 | -19497 | 1311.00 |
| 04/01/2014 | 363451 | 158152 | 58007 | 100145 | -17172 | 1279.60 |
| 04/08/2014 | 365400 | 149693 | 61094 | 88599 | -11546 | 1310.10 |
| 04/15/2014 | 369577 | 147432 | 68140 | 79292 | -9307 | 1302.9 |
| 04/22/2014 | 372593 | 146880 | 65047 | 81833 | 2541 | 1284.9 |
| 04/29/2014 | 378092 | 147769 | 62542 | 85227 | 3394 | 1296.2 |
*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).
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