FX Speculators Continued To Raise Bearish USD Positions This Week
Zachary Storella | Sep 24, 2017 03:32AM ET
The latest data for the weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) report, released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday, showed that large traders and currency speculators continued to increase their bearish bets against the US dollar this week.
Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large speculators, had an overall US dollar position totaling $-13.19 billion as of Tuesday September 19th, according to the latest data from the CFTC and dollar amount calculations by Reuters. This was a weekly decline of $-1.62 billion from the $-11.57 billion total position that was registered the previous week, according to the Reuters calculation (totals of the US dollar contracts against the combined contracts of the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc).
The aggregate US dollar position is down for five straight weeks and a whopping twelve out of the past thirteen weeks with the only gain coming on August 15th.
Weekly Speculator Contract Changes:
The individual major currencies had three weekly changes above the (+ or -) 10,000 contract mark this week in the speculators category.
- British pound sterling bets jumped mightily by over +35,000 net contracts this week on the back of higher inflation and a possible interest rate increase coming. The GBP speculative standing is now at its best level since November 2015.
- Euro bets fell by over -10,000 bets for a second straight week and are down for three out of the last four weeks. Overall, euro bets are still in a bullish standing at +62,753 net contracts but at the lowest level in twelve weeks.
- Mexican peso bets dropped by over -40,000 contracts this week after speculators had pushed bullish positions to the highest speculative level of the year above +115,000 net contracts.
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Overall, the major currencies that improved against the US dollar last week were the British pound sterling (35,924 weekly change in contracts), Japanese yen (5,975 contracts), Canadian dollar (8,347 contracts) and the Australian dollar (9,479 contracts).
The currencies whose speculative bets declined last week versus the dollar were the euro (-23,305 weekly change in contracts), Swiss franc (-255 contracts), New Zealand dollar (-5,680 contracts) and the Mexican peso (-40,046 contracts).
EuroFX:
British Pound Sterling:
Japanese Yen:
Swiss Franc:
Canadian Dollar:
Australian Dollar:
New Zealand Dollar:
Mexican Peso:
*COT Report: The weekly commitment of traders report summarizes the total trader positions for open contracts in the futures trading markets. The CFTC categorizes trader positions according to commercial hedgers (traders who use futures contracts for hedging as part of the business), non-commercials (large traders who speculate to realize trading profits) and nonreportable traders (usually small traders/speculators). Find CFTC criteria here: (http://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/CommitmentsofTraders/ExplanatoryNotes/index.htm ).
The Commitment of Traders report is published every Friday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and shows futures positions data that was reported as of the previous Tuesday (3 days behind).
Each currency contract is a quote for that currency directly against the U.S. dollar, a net short amount of contracts means that more speculators are betting that currency to fall against the dollar and a net long position expect that currency to rise versus the dollar.
(The charts overlay the forex closing price of each Tuesday when COT trader positions are reported for each corresponding spot currency pair.) See more information and explanation on the weekly COT report from the CFTC website.
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