Forex Speculators Reduced U.S. Dollar Bullish Positions For 4th Week
Zachary Storella | Feb 05, 2017 04:25AM 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 cut back on their bullish bets for the U.S. dollar for a fourth consecutive week last week.
Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large speculators, had an overall U.S. dollar long position totaling $18.47 billion as of Tuesday January 31st, according to the latest data from the CFTC and dollar amount calculations by Reuters. This was a weekly change of $-1.57 billion from the $20.04 billion total long position that was registered the previous week, according to the Reuters calculation (totals of the U.S. dollar contracts against the combined contracts of the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc).
Last week’s data shows that speculators have now brought their net positions below the $20 billion level for the first time in fourteen weeks (since October 25th) after reaching a high of $28.14 (on December 6th) in that time frame.
The major currencies that improved against the U.S. dollar last week were the euro (6,635 weekly change in contracts), British pound sterling (1,400 contracts), Japanese yen (8,509 contracts), Canadian dollar (953 contracts), Australian dollar (1,762 contracts), New Zealand dollar (8,861 contracts) and the Mexican peso (1,446 contracts).
The only currency whose speculative bets declined last week versus the dollar was the Swiss franc (-3,496 weekly change in contracts).
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This latest COT data is through Tuesday and shows a quick view of how large speculators or non-commercials (for-profit traders) as well as the commercial traders (hedgers & traders for business purposes) were positioned in the futures markets. All currency positions are in direct relation to the U.S. dollar where, for example, a bet for the euro is a bet that the euro will rise versus the dollar while a bet against the euro will be a bet that the dollar will gain versus the euro.
h3 Weekly Charts: Large Trader Weekly Positions vs Price/h3EuroFX:
*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.
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