Forex Speculators Raised US Dollar Bearish Positions For 4th Week
Zachary Storella | Sep 17, 2017 04:17AM 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 added to their bearish bets for the US dollar this week.
Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large speculators, had an overall US dollar short position totaling $-11.57 billion as of Tuesday September 12th, according to the latest data from the CFTC and dollar amount calculations by Reuters. This was a weekly decline of $-0.68 billion from the $-10.89 billion total short 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 US dollar aggregate position has now fallen for four consecutive weeks and for eleven out of the past twelve weeks to a new low level since 2013. At this time, the USD position has been in bearish territory for nine straight weeks after turning bearish on July 18th.
Weekly Speculator Contract Changes:
The individual major currencies saw two weekly changes above the (+ or -) 10,000 contract mark this week in the speculators category.
- Japanese yen bets jumped by over +15,000 contracts this week and speculators have now been in favor of the JPY for seven out of the last eight weeks. Yen positions are still in bearish territory but have come back a long ways from the most extreme bearish levels of July (-126,919 contracts) to be in the least bearish position since June (-49,959 contracts).
- Euro bets dropped by over -10,000 bets this week after a similar gain last week. Overall, euro bets are in a very bullish standing just off the highest level of the year which was registered just last week at +96,309 net contracts.
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Overall, the major currencies that improved against the US dollar last week were the British pound sterling (6,842 weekly change in contracts), Japanese yen (15,648 contracts), Swiss franc (857 contracts) and the Mexican peso (3,386 contracts).
The currencies whose speculative bets declined last week versus the dollar were the euro (-10,251 weekly change in contracts), Canadian dollar (-3,145 contracts), Australian dollar (-1,871 contracts) and the New Zealand dollar (-2,373 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).
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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