Speculators pared back their net long bets on the dollar for a second straight week, according to calculations by Reuters and US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday. The value of the net long dollar position was $28.25 billion in the week ended Jan. 8, compared with $30.16 billion in the previous week. The speculative market has been long the dollar since mid-June last year.
The CFTC, which had stopped releasing the data because of the 35-day partial US government shutdown, resumed on Feb. 1. 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 broader 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 $27.55 billion as of Jan. 8, compared with $29.55 billion a week earlier.
The dollar has struggled since the beginning of the year as several Federal Reserve officials have started to pull back a little bit on their bullish view on US interest rates and the economy. In the cryptocurrency market, speculators' net short position on bitcoin Cboe futures increased to 1,306 contracts in the week ended Jan. 8, up from 1,230 short contracts the previous week.
Bitcoin remains entrenched in a deep slump, which began early last year, despite a recovery on Friday as the currency slid into oversold conditions. Bitcoin was last up 7.9 percent at $3,623 on the Bitstamp platform. It has dropped roughly 80 percent since soaring to an all-time high of nearly $20,000 in December 2017.
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