Takeaways From This Week's COT Report: Investors Position For ECB, FED, Risk & Safety
Data in this report cover up to Tuesday Mar 1 & were released Friday Mar 4.
IMM data for the week through March revealed the first pick up in aggregate long USD positioning since mid-January and the first meaningful jump in overall USD bullish positioning since mid-January.
Positive US data releases and the proximity of this month’s key central bank policy decisions perhaps persuaded speculative investors to reload on their recently depleted net EUR short positions. Net EUR shorts jumped 22k contracts (to 68.5k contracts) this week, or nearly USD2.9bn (to USD9.3bn).
Elsewhere, investor positioning suggests a preference for both risk (net AUD longs rising by USD520mn, taking the net bet here to the largest since September 2014) as well as safety (net JPY longs up around 7k contracts or USD657mn, taking net JPY to the most bullish since early 2012). Investors appear unworried that both the Australian and Japanese authorities have expressed concern about their respective currency’s strength.
Net GBP shorts rose USD536mn in the week. Blame that on the “Brexit” risk.
Meanwhile, negative CAD sentiment continues to moderate. Peak bearishness occurred at the end of the January (-67k contracts, close to the 2013-15 extremes in positioning) and has since more than halved to -30.5k contracts this week. (USD2.2bn). The move has been primarily driven by covering CAD shorts (bottom right p1), with limited changes in gross CAD longs.
PS: Copy signals, Trade and Earn on Forex4you - https://www.share4you.com/en/?affid=0fd9105
