Futures market speculative positioning data from the CFTC Commitments of Traders report as of the close on Tuesday, June 18:
- EUR net long 20K vs short 7K prior
- JPY net short 61K vs short 73K prior
- GBP net short 20K vs short 54K prior
- AUD net short 64K vs short 63K prior
- CAD net short 26K vs short 36K prior
- NZD net long 2K vs long 2K prior
- CHF net long 5K vs short 21K prior
- Dollar Index net long 14K vs 43K prior
- Gold net long 44K vs 59K prior
Traders were bailing out of US dollar longs ahead of Wednesday`s FOMC decision. Speculative money has been absolutely whipsawed in the past few weeks. The market was stuck in money-losing euro shorts for much of that time and then went long ahead of the Fed. Since Tuesday`s close the euro is down more than 250 pips. It`s a similar story for cable shorts, which finally paid off.
The good news is that with the market long-to-neutral on the euro, it will be easier for it to slide — something I pointed out on Monday. JPY positioning has also pulled back form the extreme and that could make gains a bit easier (although I suspect longs have been piling in since Wednesday).
