By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Speculators boosted their net long bets on the U.S. dollar in the latest week to a five-week high, according to calculations by Reuters and Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday.
The value of the net long dollar position was $15.29 billion in the week ended Sept. 17. The net long dollar position had stood at $13.33 billion last week.
To be long a currency means traders believe it will rise in value, while being short points to a bearish bias. U.S. dollar positioning was derived from net contracts of International Monetary Market speculators in the Japanese yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars.
In a wider measure of dollar positioning that includes net contracts on the New Zealand dollar, Mexican peso, Brazilian real and Russian ruble, the greenback posted a net long position of $15.40 billion in the week ended Sept. 17, compared with $12.58 billion the previous week.
On Friday, the U.S. dollar rose against a basket of currencies and it posted its first weekly increase in three, helped by hopes that the Federal Reserve would not lower rates aggressively.
Against a favorable economic backdrop, the Fed lowered key lending rates by a quarter point on Wednesday, but signaled a higher bar to further reductions in borrowing costs.
Interest rates futures implied traders saw a 63% chance of another rate cut by year-end, compared with 69% late on Thursday, CME Group's FedWatch program showed.
While interest rate cuts typically weaken the U.S. dollar, because investors often swap dollars for foreign currencies to take advantage of better interest rates in other countries, the recent Fed rate cuts have done little to hurt the greenback.
The strength of the U.S. economy relative to the rest of the world and low interest rates around the globe have led investors to favor the U.S. dollar.
Japanese Yen (Contracts of 12,500,000 yen) $-2.759 billion
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 50,842 56,579
Short 26,980 23,988
Net 23,862 32,591
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 164,272 180,535
Short 232,831 230,377
Net -68,559 -49,842
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 21,332 37,903
Short 107,456 130,136
Net -86,124 -92,233
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 15,125 16,087
Short 19,681 18,979
Net -4,556 -2,892
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 62,004 54,971
Short 42,181 43,448
Net 19,823 11,523
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 34,566 36,994
Short 74,648 90,008
Net -40,082 -53,014
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 135,507 126,807
Short 53,881 31,170
Net 81,626 95,637
17 Sep 2019 Prior week
week
Long 15,824 22,490
Short 51,867 52,280
Net -36,043 -29,790