-- Posted Friday, 7 January 2011 | Digg This Article | | Source: GoldSeek.com

Gold COT Report - Futures
Large Speculators			Commercial		Total
Long	Short	Spreading	Long	Short	Long	Short
250,305	47,987	68,997	193,319	447,901	512,621	564,885
Change from Prior Reporting Period
-7,840	5,630	-4,196	2,879	-2,309	-9,157	-875
Traders
209	69	72	53	51	295	166
	Small Speculators
	Long	Short	Open Interest
	79,992	27,728	592,613
	7,280	-1,002	-1,877
	non reportable positions		Change from the previous reporting period
COT Gold Report - Positions as of				Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Gold COT Report - Futures & Options Combined
Large Speculators			Commercial		Total
Long	Short	Spreading	Long	Short	Long	Short
256,944	32,221	193,786	256,070	535,762	706,801	761,770
Change from Prior Reporting Period
-7,048	5,909	-7,142	374	-4,129	-13,816	-5,362
Traders
246	79	140	60	57	353	236
	Small Speculators
	Long	Short	Open Interest
	89,704	34,735	796,505
	6,944	-1,510	-6,872
	non reportable positions		Change from the previous reporting period
COT Gold Report - Positions as of				Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Silver COT Report - Futures
Large Speculators			Commercial		Total
Long	Short	Spreading	Long	Short	Long	Short
40,483	10,448	34,204	29,598	79,349	104,285	124,001
-1,056	1,028	866	-688	-1,828	-878	66
Traders
78	38	37	32	42	135	96
	Small Speculators
	Long	Short	Open Interest
	32,646	12,930	136,931
	-109	-1,053	-987
	non reportable positions		Change from the previous reporting period
COT Silver Report - Positions as of				Tuesday, January 04, 2011

US Dollar Index COT Report - Futures
Large Speculators			Commercial		Total
Long	Short	Spreading	Long	Short	Long	Short
18,606	19,874	671	4,292	4,566	23,569	25,111
2,523	8,473	120	-930	-7,672	1,713	921
Traders
24	35	7	10	13	40	51
	Small Speculators
	Long	Short	Open Interest
	4,108	2,566	27,677
	-434	358	1,279
	non reportable positions		Change from the previous reporting period
COT Silver Report - Positions as of				Tuesday, January 04, 2011

US Dollar Index COT Report - Futures & Options Combined
Large Speculators			Commercial		Total
Long	Short	Spreading	Long	Short	Long	Short
18,598	19,870	901	4,439	4,709	23,939	25,481
2,564	8,455	135	-922	-7,645	1,777	946
Traders
26	38	9	11	13	42	56
	Small Speculators
	Long	Short	Open Interest
	4,167	2,625	28,106
	-465	366	1,312
	non reportable positions		Change from the previous reporting period
COT Silver Report - Positions as of				Tuesday, January 04, 2011

The COT reports which we look at each week provide a breakdown of each Tuesday's open interest for markets in which 20 or more traders hold positions equal to or above the reporting levels established by the CFTC.   The weekly reports for Futures-and-Options-Combined Commitments of Traders are released every Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.   The short report shows open interest separately by reportable and Non-reportable positions.   For reportable positions, additional data is provided for commercial and non-commercial holdings, spreading, changes from the previous report.

Futures and Options Combined

What does this title mean?   A future is a standardized contract traded through regulated exchanges where an investor buys or sells a contract at a specified price for a specific date in the future.   The price includes the interest charge due to the seller by the buyer from the date of the contract to the due date.   An option is the ‘right to buy or sell’ a contract at a fixed date in the future at a specific [strike] price.   The difference is that a futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell, whereas an option gives the holder the right to buy or sell.   An option holder can decide not to take up that right and will only lose the cost of buying the option.   His loss is therefore definable at the start of his investment, while the potential profit has not limit to it.   A futures contract is usually leveraged [a loan provided] up to 90% of the contract.   However, with the owner liable to top up his ‘margin’ to maintain this 10% his potential losses can rise far higher than his investment.  A ‘long’ [buying] contract limits its loss to the full price of the item, whereas the ‘short’ [selling] contract has no limit except the height that the price of the item can rise to.

The Commitment of Traders report [COT] is therefore a report on the overall position of the Commodity Exchange [COMEX or NYMEX].

Large & Small Speculators

The word “speculator” implies that the person is simply making a bet on the way he thinks the price of the item is going to move.   In essence, he is a gambler.   A trader might be this, but then again he might be an Arbitrageur, buying in one market and selling in another to capture the price difference between the two.   He wants to deal as fast as possible so as to minimize his risk of a price movement while he is exposed.   We would not put him in the same category as a speculator.

Contract

One contract is 100 ounces of the commodity [gold or silver in this case].   The numbers referred to above are therefore the number of 100-ounce contracts in that position.   The net long speculative position is found by adding the large and small speculators bought contracts and deducting the large and small speculators sold contracts.   We work on there being 32,150 ounces in a tonne.

Buy [Long]

A long position is where an investor, trader, speculator buys 100 ounces x the number of contracts.     

Sell [Short]

A short position is where an investor, trader, speculator sells 100 ounces x the number contracts.

Spreading

For the options-and-futures-combined report, spreading measures the extent to which each non-commercial trader holds equal combined-long and combined-short positions. For example, if a non-commercial trader in Gold futures holds 2,000 long contracts and 1,500 short contracts, 500 contracts will appear in the "Long" category and 1,500 contracts will appear in the "Spreading" category.

Open Interest

Open interest is the total of all futures and/or option contracts entered into and not yet offset by a transaction, by delivery, by exercise, etc. The aggregate of all long open interest is equal to the aggregate of all short open interest.

Reportable Positions

Clearing members, futures commission merchants, and foreign brokers (collectively called "reporting firms") file daily reports with the Commission. Those reports show the futures and option positions of traders that hold positions above specific reporting levels set by CFTC regulations.

Commercial and Non-commercial Traders

When an individual reportable trader is identified to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the trader is classified either as "commercial" or "non-commercial." All of a trader's reported futures positions in a commodity are classified as commercial if the trader uses futures contracts in that particular commodity for hedging as defined in the Commission's regulations (1.3(z)).

Non-reportable Positions

The long and short open interest shown as "Non-reportable Positions" are derived by subtracting total long and short "Reportable Positions" from the total open interest. Accordingly, for "Non-reportable Positions," the number of traders involved and the commercial/non-commercial classification of each trader are unknown.

Changes in Commitments from Previous Reports

Changes represent the differences between the data for the current report date and the data published in the previous report.

Number of Traders

To determine the total number of reportable traders in a market, a trader is counted only once regardless whether the trader appears in more than one category (non-commercial traders may be long or short only and may be spreading; commercial traders may be long and short). To determine the number of traders in each category, however, a trader is counted in each category in which the trader holds a position. Therefore, the sum of the numbers of traders in each category will often exceed the "Total" number of traders in that market.

-- Posted Friday, 7 January 2011 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com

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