10-Year Note Non-Commercial Speculator Positions:
Large bond speculators continued to raise their bearish net positions in the 10-Year Note futures markets this week, according to the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
The non-commercial futures contracts of 10-Year Note futures, traded by large speculators and hedge funds, totaled a net position of -383,842 contracts in the data reported through Tuesday, July 30th. This was a weekly change of -3,673 net contracts from the previous week which had a total of -380,169 net contracts.
The week’s net position was the result of the gross bullish position (longs) increasing by 14,814 contracts (to a weekly total of 693,303 contracts) while the gross bearish position (shorts) rose by 18,487 contracts for the week (to a total of 1,077,145 contracts).
Large speculators continued to raise their bearish bets for a third straight week and for the fifth time out of the past seven weeks.
The speculative position has remained overall bearish dating back to December of 2017, reaching an all-time record high bearish level on September 25th of 2018. Since then, speculative bearish positions have retreated but have continued to remain overall bearish. Usually reliable trend-followers, the speculators have been caught on the wrong side of this market this year as 10-year bonds have been strongly bid.
10-Year Note Commercial Positions:
The commercial traders' position, hedgers or traders engaged in buying and selling for business purposes, totaled a net position of 311,918 contracts on the week. This was a weekly rise of 136 contracts from the total net of 311,782 contracts reported the previous week.
10-Year Note Futures:
Over the same weekly reporting time-frame, from Tuesday to Tuesday, the 10-Year Note Futures (Front Month) closed at approximately $127.78 which was a shortfall of $-0.01 from the previous close of $127.79, according to unofficial market data.