The weekly Commitments of Traders (COT) report, released on Friday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), showed that large futures traders decreased their total bullish bets of the US dollar last week for the first time since April. Prior to last week, total US dollar long positions had increased for four consecutive weeks and to a new highest level since 2008 when Reuters started calculating the total $ amount of positions, according to Reuters.
Non-commercial large futures traders, including hedge funds and large International Monetary Market speculators, trimmed their overall US dollar long positions to a total of $39.12 billion as of Tuesday June 4th. This was a decline from the total long position of $43.77 Billion registered on May 28th, according to position calculations by Reuters that derives this total by the amount of US dollar positions against the combined positions of euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc.
See the full COT report & charts here…
The US dollar’s strength had been cooling off for a few weeks and then sharply crystallized last week as the American currency dropped against the euro, British pound sterling, Japanese yen, Swiss franc and the Canadian dollar. The Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar continued to take it on the chin in the forex markets as these currencies saw more of the same last week in their steep decline.
This week’s fundamental outlook is highlighted by Japan’s monetary policy and interest rate decision on Tuesday which could provide ammunition to the already volatile Japanese yen pairs. Also on the docket for this week is the New Zealand interest rate decision on Wednesday, Australian employment report and US retail sales on Thursday, then Eurozone consumer prices as well as more data out of the United States coming on Friday. See our latest currency pair commentary & major economic highlights below.
See the full Technical Currency Pairs post and charts here…
Sunday, June 9
Japan — gross domestic product
Monday, June 10
Switzerland — unemployment rate
Switzerland — retail sales data
Canada — housing starts
Tuesday, June 11
Japan — monetary policy statement and interest rate decision
United Kingdom — NIESR GDP estimate
Wednesday, June 12
New Zealand — interest rate decision
United Kingdom — employment data
Thursday, June 13
Australia — May employment data
Switzerland — producer price data
United States — retail sales data
Japan — Bank of Japan minutes
United States — weekly jobless claims
Friday, June 14
Euro zone — consumer price index
euro zone — employment data
United States — University of Michigan confidence survey
United States — current account
United States — producer price index
See our full economic calendar for more events.