Money managers raised their net long position in Brent crude oil futures and options in the week ended July 5, according to IntercontinentalExchange Inc.'s (ICE) weekly Commitment of Traders report published Monday.

Money managers, including hedge funds, held a net long position of 67,782 contracts, up 57% from 43,308 contracts in the week before.

Traders in the category raised their long position by 12,793 and cut their short position by 11,681.

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.

Open interest in crude oil futures and options increased 20,745 to 871,267.

" London 's global benchmark had become an 'investor's darling' due to overhang inventories at Cushing, with the U.S. benchmark decoupling from global crudes," Andrey Kryuchenkov, vice president of commodities research at VTB Capital, said in a research note.

Brent remains "the ultimate global benchmark," benefiting from hopes of improving global demand for oil in the coming months, he said.

Elsewhere, speculators raised their holdings in gasoil by 8,193 to 30,208 from 22,015 last week, the data showed.

ICE publishes the COT reports each Monday at 1100 GMT with data for the previous Tuesday.

The reports contain the same four categories of market participants used by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission: producers, swap dealers, managed money and other reportables.

ICE Futures Europe's COT reports include futures-only and futures-and-options-combined data, as well as open interest concentration among the contracts' largest traders.
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