CFTC data shows speculators pile into 5-year Treasury shorts for week of November 3, 2026

Speculators added 246,314 contracts to their net short position in CBOT US 5-year Treasury futures in the week of November 3, 2026. That brought the total to 1,275,370 contracts, the largest net short of any position in the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

The figures come from the CFTC’s weekly Commitments of Traders report. The report shows how different groups of traders are positioned across futures markets. This week it covered equity index futures, Treasury futures on the CBOT and CME, and CME Bitcoin futures.

Equity speculators back off their S&P 500 bearishness

Equity fund speculators cut their S&P 500 CME net short position by 27,501 contracts, leaving it at 345,246.

Equity fund managers barely moved. They raised their S&P 500 CME net long position by 55 contracts to 917,568.

The split between the two groups is the more interesting detail. Speculators are short. Managers are long, and their net long is much larger than the speculators’ net short.

The research summary attached to the data reads the short reduction as a potential shift toward equities. Trimming a short does not make a trader bullish. It can simply mean taking profits, cutting risk, or getting tired of waiting for a decline.

The Treasury curve tells two different stories

The bond side is where things got lopsided. Here is how speculators adjusted their net short positions across CBOT US Treasury futures:

• 5-year: increased by 246,314 contracts to 1,275,370
• 2-year: trimmed by 6,932 contracts to 1,002,544
• 10-year: trimmed by 19,179 contracts to 962,359
• UltraBond: trimmed by 21,646 contracts to 361,932
• Treasury bonds: trimmed by 10,041 contracts to 9,097

Four of the five contracts saw shorts reduced. The fifth saw shorts grow by nearly a quarter of a million contracts.

The Treasury bonds contract also deserves a look. The 10,041-contract cut was bigger than the 9,097 contracts left over. The net short there was more than halved in one week.

Bitcoin futures: small, steady, and long

The net long position in CME Bitcoin futures stood at 2,230 contracts for the week.

The research summary describes this modest long as a sign of stabilization for digital assets. The COT figures show what the part of the market that reports to a US regulator is doing.

Why the COT report gets so much attention

The Commitments of Traders report is published weekly. It reflects positions as of the report date, so it lags real-time trading.

The research summary connects this week’s shifts to expectations for Federal Reserve policy on interest rates and inflation.

What this means for markets

Equity speculators reduced their bearish bets. Bond speculators reduced their bearish bets across most of the curve. Then they built a very large short at the 5-year.

For Bitcoin, the 2,230-contract net long is worth tracking over the coming weeks. For now, the data shows equity bears easing off, bond bears concentrating at one maturity, and Bitcoin futures traders leaning long.