US dollar net speculator positions rose to $13.5 billion last week
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 raised their bullish bets for the US dollar after three weeks of declining wagers.
Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large speculators, had an overall US dollar long position totaling $13.5 billion as of Tuesday May 16th, according to the latest data from the CFTC and dollar amount calculations by Reuters. This was a weekly change of $2.5 billion from the $11.0 billion total long 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).
Speculators had decreased their bullish positions to the lowest bullish level since October before last week’s rebound.
Weekly Speculator Contract Changes:
The individual major currency contracts saw more sharp movements this week with six major currencies seeing weekly changes above the 10,000 contract mark (the previous week had seen five currencies above that figure).
The euro continued to gain speculator bids after advancing into bullish territory on May 9th for the first time in three years while the Japanese yen fell for a third week and saw the largest shortfall in speculator positions on the week.
The major currencies that improved against the US dollar last week were the euro (15,205 weekly change in contracts), British pound sterling (13,803 contracts), New Zealand dollar (1,184 contracts) and the Mexican peso (151 contracts).
The currencies whose speculative bets declined last week versus the dollar were the Japanese yen (-23,701 weekly change in contracts), Canadian dollar (-11,785 contracts), Australian dollar (-19,440 contracts) and the Swiss franc (-5,966 contracts).
Table of Weekly Commercial Traders and Speculators Levels & Changes:
Weekly Charts: Large Trader Weekly Positions vs Price
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.