Head of Commodity Strategy
Summary: Continued dollar strength helped support a fourth consecutive week of speculative buying against major currencies such as CAD, JPY and not least the euro.
Saxo Bank publishes two weekly Commitment of Traders reports (COT) covering leveraged fund positions in bonds and stock index futures. For IMM currency futures and the VIX, we use the broader measure called non-commercial.
Continued dollar strength in the week to February 11 helped lift bullish bets to a new high for the year. As buying of the Greenback extended into a fourth week the long against ten IMM currency futures and the Dollar Index rose by $2 billion to $11.7 billion. Still well below the 2019 peak at $38 billion, reached last April when the Dollar Index traded lower at 97.5.
The selling was once again led by the euro and the 1.1% sell-off during the reporting week helped drive a 10.5k lots increase in the net-short position to 86k lots, the equivalent of €10.7 billion. One of the few exceptions were the Australian Dollar, which despite trading lower on the week, managed to attract short covering in response to higher commodity prices.
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