Speculators Add to Short Euro and Sterling Positions

Speculators in the currency futures made mostly small adjustments to their gross foreign currency exposure. There were only three position adjustments of more than 5k contacts.

Since the markets turned on 11 February, the Canadian dollar has been the strongest of the major currencies, appreciating a little more than 4.5% against the US dollar. Gross shorts have been nearly halved since then. They were cut by 6.9k contracts or about 10% to reach 61.5k contracts during the recent reporting period.

The bears jumped into the short euro position, adding 18.1k contracts to the gross short position. This is the largest increase since November It now stands at 172.5k Of note the gross longs, which increased by 50k from early-January through late-February, fell for second consecutive week. The bulls trimmed the gross long position by 3.6k contracts to 104k.

After rising 2.2% since the end of the reporting period, sterling is still off 2.5% over the past month. The momentum favored the bears during the reporting period, and they added 10k contracts to the gross short sterling position. It now stands at 78.3k contracts. The gross short position has been trending higher since early-November when it was a little below 44k contracts. Bottom pickers have quietly been adding to the gross long position. It increased another 3.5k contracts, which was also nearly 10%, to 39k contracts.

The most distinct pattern during the most recent reporting period was that speculators are mostly trimmed short currency exposures. There were two exceptions, which we have already seen, the euro and sterling. There is no overall pattern in terms of the gross longs, except to note that the position adjustments were minor.

The bulls among the speculators slashed their gross long 10-year Treasury futures position by 62.4k contracts. They still have 475.2k contracts. The bears added 19.7k contracts to their gross short position, raising it to 472.6k contracts. The net long position fell to 2.5k contracts from 84.7k. Recall that in the previous reporting period the net position jumped to the long side after being short 40.3k contracts.

The speculative net long oil futures position rose by 6.7k contracts to 212.5k. However, the bulls did not buy a single contract, and instead trimmed their gross long position by 3.5k contracts (to 529.8k). The bears covered 10.1k gross short contracts, leaving them with 317.2k contracts.

1-Mar		Commitment of Traders
	Net	Prior	Gross Long	Change	Gross Short	Change
Euro	-68.5	-46.9	104.0	-3.6	172.5	18.1
Yen	59.6	52.7	94.1	1.7	34.4	-5.2
Sterling	-39.4	-33.1	39.0	3.5	78.3	10.0
Swiss Franc	-1.5	-2.3	19.7	-0.5	21.2	-1.3
C$	-30.5	-36.9	31.0	-0.5	61.5	-6.9
A$	16.9	9.6	76.5	4.0	59.6	-3.3
NZ$	-4.2	-6.6	16.6	0.6	20.8	-1.8
Mexican Peso	-56.5	-52.9	25.2	-5.0	81.7	-1.3
(CFTC, Bloomberg) Speculative positions in 000's of contracts