Speculators increased their net long US dollar bets in the latest week to the highest level since December 2015, according to calculations by Reuters and US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday. The value of the net long dollar position was $37.21 billion in the week ended April 23, compared with $34.55 billion the previous week. US net long dollars rose for a fourth straight week.
US dollar positioning was derived from net contracts of International Monetary Market speculators in the Japanese 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 $32.59 billion in the week of April 23, compared with $29.66 billion the previous week.
"The greenback has clearly begun to make headway across the board in the past week or so, particularly since China's stock market has faltered," said Oliver Jones, market economist, at Capital Economics in London. "We expect that to continue, as tentative signs that growth in the global economy is stabilizing fail to translate into the recovery that investors are hoping for," he added.
So far this year, the dollar index has risen 1.9 percent. In the cryptocurrency market, speculators' net short position on bitcoin Cboe futures slightly worsened to -1,143 in the week ended April 23, from -1,034 contracts the previous week. Bitcoin had started to creep higher the last few weeks, but on Friday, it was down 0.4% at $5,111.01 on the Bitstamp platform.
Comments
Comments are closed.