Big CFTC data revision raises oil traders' eyebrows

A quiet data revision that has boosted by nearly 25 percent the number of oil futures contracts U.S. regulators think are held by speculators is raising eyebrows in the energy trading community.

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The data revision converted approximately 327,000 long and 330,000 short NYMEX crude oil futures and options positions into mostly spreading positions held by speculators.

The big shift is all the more surprising, oil traders and analysts said, since the CFTC apparently reclassified only one unidentified oil trader at the same time as the data revision.