Speculators pared back bullish bets on the US dollar in the latest week, according to Reuters calculations and data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday. The value of the dollar's net long position slipped to $20.89 billion in the week ended October 26, from $21.73 billion the week before. This was the third time in four weeks US dollar longs came in under $21 billion. The speculative community has been long the dollar since May last year.
To be long a currency is to make a bet it will rise, while being short is a bet its value will decline. For the month of October, the dollar index so far was down 1.5 percent, although year to date, the greenback was up 5.1 percent. Currencies have been trading in narrow ranges amid uncertainty about the timing of the Federal Reserve's first rate hike in about nine years. The Reuters calculation for the aggregate US dollar position is derived from net positions of International Monetary Market speculators in the yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars.