November 04, 2024 03:42 GMT
FOREX: Positioning Adjustments Still Favored USD Towards End October
FOREX
- Last week's CFTC positioning update (up to Oct 29th) still showed a strong bias towards the USD. Across leveraged funds and asset managers we saw a further 90k contracts shift in favour of the dollar. This was the third straight week of strong flows into the USD.
- By currency we saw leveraged funds shift back into a net short for JPY and add to shorts against the EUR and CAD.
- AUD and NZD saw a modest uptick from leveraged funds, but this was more than offset by asset managers adding to shorts for both currencies.
- Indeed, asset managers were net sellers of all currencies against the USD last week, see the table below.
- Price action so far this week has been heavily skewed against the USD, as election uncertainty rises. Weekend opinion polls pointed to a very close Presidential race.
- This is likely seeing some USD long exposure trimmed, particularly given the build up seen in recent weeks ( nearly 380k contracts for the USD since mid Oct).
Table 1: CFTC Positioning By Currency/By Type
| Leveraged Contracts | Asset manager Contracts | |||
| Weekly Change | Outright Position | Weekly Change | Outright Position | |
| JPY | -10288 | -3462 | -13438 | -32924 |
| EUR | -20056 | -30212 | -1071 | 192049 |
| GBP | 871 | 56721 | -11599 | -18928 |
| AUD | 3184 | 19061 | -11339 | -24102 |
| NZD | 2822 | 12177 | -6035 | -11875 |
| CAD | -15910 | -80811 | -4942 | -136111 |
| CHF | 1154 | -7013 | -3235 | -28296 |
| MXN | 5659 | -3141 | -5967 | 38060 |
Source: CFTC/MNI - Market News/Bloomberg
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