Speculators snapped a six-week streak to add to their net long bets on the US dollar in the latest 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 $7.76 billion in the week ended Jan. 21, up from $6.64 billion last week. The
rebound comes after speculators' long US dollar position last week shrank to the smallest since the second week of June 2018.
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.
Being long a currency means traders believe it will rise in value, while being short points to a bearish bias.
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 valued at $2.42 billion, up from $1.54 billion a week earlier.
The dollar, which had enjoyed strong safe-haven demand in 2019 on heightened trade-related tensions, has seen some of that demand dip amid a thaw in trade tensions between the United States and China.
Speculators flipped their stance on the Swiss franc to a net long position of 1,536 contracts, the first time they have been net long on the Swiss Franc since August of 2017.
The franc, which dipped 0.3% this week against the greenback, came under pressure after recent data showed the amount of cash that domestic commercial banks hold with the Swiss National Bank rose, a potential sign of central bank intervention in FX markets to weaken the franc.
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