Positioning

August Payrolls Printed 162,000 Against a 56,000 Consensus.

The September Hike Leg Moved to 52.5 Percent and Passed the Hold.

Twelve days before the Fed's September 16 decision, Polymarket's deepest rate market prices a 25 basis point hike at 52.5 percent and a hold at 44.5 percent. Read at 12:38 UTC, the other three legs were a 50-basis-point-or-more hike at 0.55 percent, a 25…

The Bet on a Stronger Dollar Was the Most Crowded in Three Years of Data.

Then the US Bought Yen.

Every Tuesday the CFTC takes a snapshot of who holds what in the major currency futures markets. The snapshot taken on July 28 showed speculators net short a combined 300,673 contracts of euro, yen and sterling futures, which is 19.8 percent of the open…

The Three Big Index ETFs Are All in Negative Dealer Gamma.

The Mega-Cap Stocks That Dominate Them Are Not.

As of Friday's close, SPY, QQQ and IWM all sat in negative dealer gamma below their zero-gamma flip levels, while their biggest holdings stayed positive. It is an unusual split, because the same mega-cap stocks make up most of the weight inside those index…

Oil Jumped More Than 4 Percent When the Iran Ceasefire Collapsed.

Speculators Went In With One of Their Smallest Positions of the Year.

Oil jumped more than 4 percent when the Iran ceasefire collapsed this week, and speculators met the move holding one of their smallest crude bets of the year. West Texas Intermediate rose 4.4 percent to 73.52 dollars on July 8 after President Trump called the…

ETH Rose Almost 8 Percent This Week.

One Fund Did Most of the ETF Buying, and the Largest Wallets Sent the Most ETH to Exchanges in a Month.

ETH rose 7.68 percent over the past week, yet a single fund did most of the buying, positioning thinned, and the largest wallets moved coins onto exchanges. Three separate windows into who is behind the move point in different directions, and only the price…

Speculators Built a Record Copper Long Into the US Tariff Decision.

They Have Been Unwinding It for a Month.

Copper futures speculators built a record net long by mid May and have been unwinding it for a month, the newest weekly CFTC report showing the largest cut. The new Commitments of Traders report, dated June 30 and released Monday after the July 4 holiday…

Five Chip Companies Show Concurrent Insider Sell Clusters, Every One Including the CEO or CFO.

The Sector Has Not Shown a Single Buy Cluster Since May.

Executives at five US-listed chip companies are selling stock in concurrent insider clusters worth 119 million dollars, each including the CEO or the CFO. On the other side of the ledger, insider buy clusters across the entire US market Kresmion tracks add up…

Speculators Are the Most Net Short the British Pound in a Year.

They Built the Bet in a Single Week.

Speculators are the most net short the British pound in at least a year, and most of that heavily one sided position was built in a single week of trading. In the latest Commitments of Traders data, large speculators held a net short in sterling futures equal…

Options Dealers Are Positioned to Dampen the S&P and the Nasdaq.

The Russell 2000 Is the One Index They Are Still Positioned to Amplify.

As the second quarter closed, options dealers were positioned to dampen moves in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, but to amplify them in the Russell 2000. That split is the story. This note describes what Kresmion's dealer gamma model reads across the major US…

Kresmion's Cross Asset Regime Turned Risk-Off Today.

Credit Spreads and Recession Bets Have Not.

Kresmion's cross asset regime model crossed into Risk-Off today for the first time, and the one factor that had been holding it in Neutral was low volatility. The score did not fall because credit cracked or because recession bets jumped. It fell because the…

Speculators Are the Most Crowded Into Natural Gas in Over a Year.

Storage Sits Nearly 6 Percent Above Normal.

Speculators are their most crowded into natural gas in over a year, near 64 percent of open interest, and the storage report shows a well supplied market. That gap, between how heavily the fast money is positioned and what the physical balance and the macro…

Berkshire Tripled Its Alphabet Stake in Greg Abel's First Quarter.

Warren Buffett Spent Years Calling It One of His Mistakes.

For two decades, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger openly described their failure to buy Google as one of the clearest mistakes of their investing careers. In Berkshire Hathaway's first quarterly filing under new chief executive Greg Abel, the firm did the…

Bridgewater and Appaloosa Both Roughly Doubled Their Amazon Stakes Last Quarter.

Most of Their Peers Were Cutting.

Ray Dalio's Bridgewater and David Tepper's Appaloosa each roughly doubled their Amazon stakes in the first quarter, both reporting the same 208 dollar mark. Most of their large peers were cutting in the same three months. Read across funds rather than one…

Bitcoin Futures Speculators Are Crowded Long at a Six Week High.

Spot ETFs, Whales, and the Options Desk Are Leaning the Other Way.

Bitcoin's futures speculators are crowded into their biggest net long in six weeks, even as spot ETFs, whales, and the options desk all lean the other way. That split is the kind of signal that only shows up when you read positioning, flows, hedging, and odds…

The Market Prices Today's Fed Decision at 98%.

The Real Event Is Warsh's First Dot Plot.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its June rate decision at 2:00 p.m. Eastern today, and the deepest market betting on the outcome has gone quiet. On Polymarket, the contract for no change in interest rates holds $9.95 million in volume and prices…

Five Funds Opened New Meta Positions in Q1.

Five Others Trimmed Theirs.

Five large funds opened brand-new Meta positions in the first quarter, a combined 1.23 billion dollars of fresh money, even as five others trimmed theirs. The same quarter that drew Viking Global, Dragoneer, Renaissance Technologies, Third Point and Soros…

Bitcoin ETFs Shed $3.4 Billion in Twelve Sessions.

Futures Traders Are Still Crowded Long.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs have shed roughly $3.4 billion over the last twelve sessions, broken by a single tiny up-day, while futures speculators sit crowded long. That combination is the day's most interesting tension, and it lands on a CPI morning. Here is what…

Every Macro Factor Turned Negative This Week.

A Hot Jobs Report Was the Trigger.

Kresmion's cross-asset regime score swung from +0.20 to -0.30 over the past week, and all four of its underlying factors are now negative as of June 8. The model's conviction stepped from MEDIUM to HIGH on June 5 and has held at maximum for four straight…

Risk Appetite Rebounded in May.

It Skipped Bitcoin.

US equities closed May at a record high even as US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted their weakest stretch of demand all year, a divergence that defined the month. The risk-on rebound that lifted stocks largely bypassed crypto. The trigger for the recovery was energy.…

Risk Comes Out of the System: Positioning Capitulates as the Oil Shock Fades

The fear that drove markets to de-risk is starting to fade, but the positioning that fear created has not caught up. Cross-venue prediction markets now assign just a 11.77% chance that Bitcoin clears $130,000 by year-end, roughly one in eight. Kresmion's…