The CFTC published Commitments of Traders data for the week to 28 July showing money managers net long 15,740 lots of Brent Last Day, up just 1,485 on the week, against 108,307 lots net long in NYMEX West Texas Intermediate, up 21,4021. Brent Last Day is the CFTC-reported futures contract, code 06765T, and not the same instrument as dated Brent, the physical assessment quoted in cargo deals. The Commitments report is the weekly regulatory snapshot of who holds what in US-listed futures, and money managers are the speculative category within it.
Backing the weekly change out of the new print returns 14,255 contracts for the prior week, exactly the Brent figure this desk published for 21 July. Two consecutive prints reconciling to the lot rather than to the round number means the series can be read as continuous, so the comparison below rests on verified arithmetic rather than on an assumption that the reporting basis held steady.
Ratios of this size do not usually survive a week in which the European product complex outperforms. The week's build ran roughly fourteen to one toward the American contract, and even in standing lots the WTI book is close to seven times the Brent one, while RBOB gasoline, a US retail-facing product with no European spread consequence, carried 73,877 lots, itself more than four times the Brent book. A paper market barely positioned in the contract where European refining economics live is a market that can leave a record physical margin unpriced for weeks. For a trader, the practical read is that hedging a European product exposure through Brent futures currently means transacting in a thin speculative book, and that the flat-price selloff carried far more open interest behind it than the crack move did.
