USD longs eased, GBP shorts continued to build - Rabobank

Jane Foley, Senior FX Strategist at Rabobank, lists down the IMM net speculators’ positioning as at 02 August 2016.

Key Quotes

“Having risen sharply in the previous set of data, bearish bets against the euro dropped back last week though shorts remain significantly higher relative to recent levels.

The level of USD longs eased. This was in response to the shockingly weak release of US Q2 GDP data. During the course of last week, however, the tone of US economic releases improved. This suggests USD longs may see some support in the next round of data.

GBP shorts have continued to build and are now almost twice as large as the post-Brexit level. We expect GBP/USD to fall to 1.27 by the end of the year, which would be lower than the post-Brexit low set at 1.2798.

Net JPY longs increased last week breaking a three week trend of falling levels. Moves in the yen are usually well correlated with general levels of risk appetite in the market.

CAD net longs dropped last week. On the back of the abysmal Canadian July payrolls data, another fall may be in the pipeline for next week. The level of AUD longs held broadly steady last week despite the RBA rate cut.”