Asset managers have been betting for many months, if not years, on an increase of the Euro against the Dollar. Unfortunately for them, the exact opposite is happening. Looking at the COT reports of recent months, fund managers, traditionally the most “strategic” or long-term investors, have brought their long positions over 300 thousand units, touching, last August , the historical record of 337 thousand units, to then slightly decrease up to the 300.5 thousand units of the last COT report dated 3 September. Just to make a comparison, the long positions amounted to not even 40 thousand units at the beginning of 2014.
Also their net positions, ie those obtained by subtracting the short positions from the long ones, have increased with a relatively linear trend in recent years, hitting an all time high of 179.5 thousand units on 24 April 2018, a threshold brought closer last August. In 2014, the difference was even negative, ie in favor of a prevalence of short positions.
The continuous increase in net positions is a clear indication of how asset managers continue to believe in a Euro exploit. A result which has never arrived. Indeed, by observing the Euro-Dollar exchange ratio, it is easy to see how this has been channeled into a downward trend since the beginning of 2018, when it was trading around 1.24. Currently, the pair is trading around 1.1, nearing a 28-month low of 1.0925. Why do asset managers continue to stubbornly focus on the Euro in the long run despite the results seem to prove them wrong? Certainly not for technical analysis reasons, since this type of investors use only the fundamental analysis. One of the reasons brought by some analysts is that the monetary policy stance of the European Central Bank is unsustainable in the long run and that therefore, the interest rates of the Eurozone will have to be increased sooner or later. The result is that the Euro will have to strengthen against the Dollar. Another hypothesis is that the US economy must pay the price of globalization sooner or later and thus diminish its role at the global level, with the consequence that the demand for D
ollars must be reduced accordingly.