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Bets Against the Euro Have Soared to Levels Seen Back in 2020

Bets Against the Euro Have Soared to Levels Seen Back in 2020
A one euro coin sits on 20 euro banknotes in this arranged photograph in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. The euro climbed 0.3 percent to $1.1986, the strongest in more than a week.

Fueled by concern about the Europe’s deteriorating economic situation and increased geopolitical risks, investor bearishness on the euro is now eclipsing levels seen back in October 2020 when the fallout from Covid was wreaking havoc around the world, according to Bank of New York Mellon.

Unlike back then, when those holding short euro positions ended up getting burned as the currency gained ground during the global economic recovery, investors at the current juncture “appear to have been correctly adding to short EUR exposures,” in the view of BNY strategist Daniel Tenengauzer.

While a bias toward shorting the euro isn’t new, the extent of it is, according to BNY, which models the overall stance and currency profitability based on an aggregation of forward and swap positions within its own database. Its scoring shows that investors are currently holding short positions on the euro against all currencies including the dollar, the British pound and the Swiss franc, Tenengeuzer wrote in a note Friday.

The euro has plummeted this year amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has helped drive up energy and food prices as well as stirring broader geopolitical concerns. With drought added into the mix, inflation has skyrocketed. So too, though, have growth concerns, potentially inhibiting the European Central Bank’s ability to lift interest rates as fast as other global peers and damping investor appetite for assets in the region.

The common currency is around its weakest level in two decades

The euro fell as low as 99.52 US cents last month, breaching parity with the greenback for the first time in two decades. And while the currency did rebound somewhat, it continues to linger just over the $1 mark with many investors looking for it to go lower.

A large part of the equation, of course, is broad-based dollar strength. A combination of higher US interest rates and haven flows has helped buoy the greenback against just about everything this year and some currencies such as the yen and pound have performed even worse than the euro.

Data from Bank of New York Mellon support the idea that the long-dollar trade goes well beyond bets against the euro, according to Tenengauzer. Based on BNY’s calculations, the most profitable short positions are those on the South African rand, Thai baht and the Chinese Renminbi being the most profitable.

© 2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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