Who bets on rising prices — and how often has it been more?
Net position of non-commercial traders in the gold futures market as a share of open interest from 1986 to today: the area sits mostly above the zero line, with the gold price above it on a logarithmic scale.
Who bets on rising prices — and how often has it been more?
The US regulator CFTC publishes every week how traders are positioned on COMEX. The area shows how much the non-commercial traders — funds and speculators — have bet net on rising prices, measured as a share of all open contracts. Above the zero line, bets on rising prices prevail; below it, bets on falling ones.
Most recently the share stood at 45.0 % — higher than in 73 % of the weeks of the past 10 years, whose mean sits at 39.6 %. Across the whole series the share swung between -45.1 % and 57.7 % — so today’s level is not only high in a ten-year comparison but close to the highest reading since 1986. What follows from that is something the chart does not show: in the past such phases came before further advances as well as before setbacks.
CFTC Commitments of Traders (futures only), 1986–2026, 1,941 weekly reports; gold price from our own data. The reporting date is 03/11/2026. The figures are three days old on release — the reporting date is Tuesday, publication is on Friday. What is measured is the share of open interest, not the contract count: the futures market has grown strongly over forty years, so absolute positions would above all measure that expansion. And it is a futures market measure — it says nothing about physical demand. Not a buy or sell recommendation.
Where the numbers come from
This chart is calculated from our own price recordings. It is recalculated twice a day — after the daily close and after the London reference price at 16:30.
- our own measurement Our own daily closing prices for the metals — new values every trading day
- external source CFTC — Commitments of Traders — new values weekly (reporting date Tuesday, published Friday)
The Chart view shows the most recently calculated state. The Image version — including the one for sharing and downloading — is a still image generated nightly at 02:30. Last generated on 09/11/2026 at 03:07.
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