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COT: Dollar sold against commodity and EM currencies

Forex
Picture of Ole Hansen
Ole Hansen

Head of Commodity Strategy

Summary:  Ongoing trade optimism continued to sap demand for dollars, JPY and CHF with commodity and EM currencies being bought. Rising stocks and lower volatility drove the VIX net-short to a fresh record


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.

Speculators sold dollars for a third consecutive week with the long against ten IMM currency futures falling by $0.4 billion to $12.3 billion, a ten-week low. The continued risk appetite being driven by hopes for a growth stabilizing trade deal helped support demand for commodity and EM currencies.

The Greenback did enjoy some buying as well on the back of continued selling of CHF, JPY and not least EUR.

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Leveraged fund positions in bonds, stocks and VIX

Heavy selling was seen across financial futures markets from bonds to stocks. Volatility sellers remained out in force, selling another 16k lots of VIX futures to take the net short to a fresh record of 204k lots.

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What is the Commitments of Traders report?

The Commitments of Traders (COT) report is issued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) every Friday at 15:30 EST with data from the week ending the previous Tuesday. The report breaks down the open interest across major futures markets from bonds, stock index, currencies and commodities. The ICE Futures Europe Exchange issues a similar report, also on Fridays, covering Brent crude oil and gas oil.

In commodities, the open interest is broken into the following categories: Producer/Merchant/Processor/User; Swap Dealers; Managed Money and other.

In financials the categories are Dealer/Intermediary; Asset Manager/Institutional; Managed Money and other.

Our focus is primarily on the behaviour of Managed Money traders such as commodity trading advisors (CTA), commodity pool operators (CPO), and unregistered funds.

They are likely to have tight stops and no underlying exposure that is being hedged. This makes them most reactive to changes in fundamental or technical price developments. It provides views about major trends but also helps to decipher when a reversal is looming.

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