Commitment of Traders Analysis of Crude Oil

The chart below shows a chart of an ETF that follows the price of crude oil, which has the ticker USO, on the top panel, and a chart breaking down oils COT structure on the bottom panel:

I explained the way I interpret this type of chart in this post. In a nutshell, you want to be buying when the commercials have a small short position, and you want to be selling when the large speculators are large long position. In the bottom panel, the commercials are in purple, and the large speculators are in blue.

If you click on the above image, and match up green circles on the bottom panel, with the green circles on the top panel, you will see that these are times where the commercials had reduced their short positions, and therefore a buy signal was generated. The opposite is true for the red circles.

Right now, the commercials have not only reduced their short position, but they were long for a couple of weeks, which is something I have not seen before. Commercial traders are generally those that physically use the commodity, and have access to more information that the public would have access to, so it makes sense to buy when they are buying.

I still feel that going long commodities and shorting equities is a prudent strategy based on the way my charts look right now.