How closely does the price of gold follow the Commitment of Traders (COT) report?
Here’s a pair of Tweets from a person I follow and respect.
Now we know why gold dropped $40oz in just a little over a week -the biggest one-week increase in large speculator futures short contracts (from 72.5K to 106.4K up 47%) that I can ever remember. Good news is they’ll have to buy them back as the seasonal strong period gets started
— fred hickey (@htsfhickey) June 22, 2018
The gold decline was 100%+ due to the shorts – there was actually a (smaller) increase in spec long positions
— fred hickey (@htsfhickey) June 22, 2018
Note that COT reports come out on Friday for the following Tuesday. All of the dates in the following table I created are from Tuesday. The price of gold is the closing price on Tuesday. The latest COT report is as of Tuesday, June 19.
Gold Price Vs Cot Positions
There was a huge increase in the number of large spec shorts as Hickey notes. There was also a big increase from May 8 to May 15. On both occasions the price of gold sank.
However, there was a big decrease in shorts from May 1 to May 8, with the price of gold going nowhere. Also, there was a huge increase in net long positions from June 5 to June 12 and the price of gold fell a bit.
Conclusion: COT analysis alone cannot fully explain large movement (or non-movement) in the price of gold.
I do agree with Hickey that the shorts will add fuel once long accumulation starts.
