Speculators raise net long dollar bets

Speculators' net long bets on the US dollar rose after declining for three straight weeks, according to calculations by Reuters and Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday. The value of the net long dollar position rose to $22.98 billion in the week ended Sept. 18 from $19.16 billion the previous week. Speculators have been net long dollars for 14 straight weeks.
US dollar positioning was derived from net contracts of International Monetary Market speculators in the yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars. In a wider measure of dollar positioning that includes net contracts on the New Zealand dollar, Mexican peso, Brazilian real and Russian ruble, the US dollar posted a net long position of $24.78 billion in the week ended Sept. 18, from $20.79 billion a week earlier.
Analysts said underlying sentiment has cooled toward the dollar given easing trade war concerns, which curbed appetite for safe havens. For instance, while China and the United States continued to wrangle over trade, the modest tariff increases were considered less severe than expected and therefore likely to have only a muted impact on global growth, analysts said. Since mid-August, the dollar index has fallen 3.3 percent.
But a more hawkish outlook from the Federal Reserve next week could further support the dollar in the near term. August's US nonfarm payrolls data showed a spike in wages last month, boosting the inflation outlook and further underpinning rate hike expectations. In other contracts, concerns about negotiations over Britain's exit from the European Union have pushed sterling net shorts to -79,258 contracts, the largest since May 2017.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Theresa May said negotiations with the EU had hit an impasse. "The two sides remain far apart, meaning the chances of an agreement being reached in October and finalized in November seem pretty slim," said Thomas Pugh, UK economist at Capital Economics in London. In the cryptocurrency market, speculators' net short position on bitcoin Cboe futures rose to -1,318 contracts in the latest week, after hitting a record low of -1,239 contracts the previous week, data showed.
Bitcoin on Friday rose 4.2 percent to $6,757.28 on the Bitstamp platform. It cleared the $7,000 hurdle in late August. Michael Novogratz, former macro hedge fund manager and founder of cryptocurrency asset management firm Galaxy Digital Capital Management, said at a Yahoo Finance summit that cryptocurrency prices have hit a bottom and bitcoin is due to bounce back.