The latest Commitments of Traders report was released, covering positions through Tuesday

The 3-Year Min/Max Screen shows that "smart money" commercial hedgers established only one new extreme this week, multi-year short exposure to the Canadian dollar. The Backtest Engine shows that any week when hedgers held more than 65,000 contracts net short, it led to gains in the loonie over the next 2 months 43% of the time, averaging a return of -0.6%. Longer-term returns were worse. Hedgers take the opposite side of large and small speculators combined. In major equity index futures, small speculators gorged on stocks this week, pushing their net exposure to $34 billion, a record high. According to the Backtest Engine, there have been 68 weeks when small specs held more than $25 billion in contracts net long. Over the next 2 months, the S&P 500 showed a positive return after only 18 of those weeks (a 26% win rate) with an average return of -4.1%. We don't place a ton of weight on this data for stocks any longer, but it's a bit concerning.