NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Large noncommercial traders raised their net short position in natural-gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange during the week ended Tuesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported Friday.
Speculative, or noncommercial, traders held a net short position of 160,591 contracts, up from 157,381 a week ago. The change came as they raised their long position but increased their short position more.
Open interest was 1,000,237, up from 994,703 in the previous week.
Commercial traders were net long in futures-only contracts by 139,385 contracts, up from 136,007 a week earlier, decreasing their long position but decreasing their short position even more.
The net long position is the difference between the number of long positions, or bets that prices will rise, and short positions, or bets that prices will fall.
Benchmark natural-gas futures on the Nymex fell 0.5% during the period covered by the CFTC data.
Money managers, such as hedge funds, bet that prices will fall, increasing their net short position in Nymex natural-gas futures to 125,138 from 116,913 contracts in the previous week.
These traders decreased their long position and increased their short position even more.
The CFTC began splitting large traders into four categories in September 2009. Money managers and other reportables comprise the previous "noncommercial" column, while swap dealers and producers, merchants, processors and users were broken out of the commercial category.