Currency speculators increased their bets against the dollar for the first time in five weeks, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed on Friday. Net short positions in the US dollar in the week to December 11 rose to $27.2 billion from $25.02 billion in the previous week.
But that was still far from the year's high, hit in November at $32.54 billion. The aggregate US dollar position is derived from the net positions of International Monetary Market speculators in yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc, Canadian and Australian dollars. Swiss francs net long positions were down nearly 75 percent, to 1,933 contracts from 7,043 the previous week.