10-Year Treasury Note Speculators Sharply Drop Net Positions

10 Year Treasury Note Non-Commercial Positions:

Large speculators and traders sharply decreased their net positions in the 10-year treasury note futures markets last week to an overall net bearish position, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.

The non-commercial futures contracts of 10-year treasury note futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of -96,267 contracts in the data reported through November 29th. This was a huge weekly decline of -268,915 contracts from the previous week which had a total of 172,648 net contracts.

Speculators bailed out of their 10-year note positions that had been overall net long the previous two weeks to their largest short position since May.

10 Year Treasury Note Commercial Positions:

The commercial traders position, categorized by the CFTC as hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes, totaled a net position of 296,736 contracts last week. This is a weekly boost of 289,121 contracts from the total net of 7,615 contracts reported the previous week.

iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond (NYSE:IEF):

Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) closed at approximately $105.97 which was a slight gain of $0.12 from the previous close of $105.85, according to market data from Yahoo Finance.

*COT Report: The COT data, released weekly to the public each Friday, is updated through the previous Tuesday (data is 3 days old) and shows a quick view of how large speculators or non-commercials (for-profit traders) as well as the commercial traders (hedgers and traders for business purposes) were positioned in the futures 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).