COT Gold, Silver and US Dollar Index Report – October 24, 2014

Gold COT Report – Futures Large Speculators Commercial Total Long Short Spreading Long Short Long Short 207,129 99,145 30,768 139,429 244,327 377,326 374,240 Change from Prior Reporting Period 13,549 -9,020 733 -1,208 24,867 13,074 16,580 Traders 141 99 75 51 54 221 203 Small Speculators Long Short Open Interest 33,731 36,817 411,057 128 -3,378 13,202 non reportable positions Change from the previous reporting period COT Gold Report – Positions as of Tuesday, October 21, 2014
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.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 24 October 2014.