Hedge Funds Went All In on Short Bonds at the Wrong Time

  • Leveraged funds boosted bullish bets on short-term Treasuries
  • Some hedge funds lost money as Treasury yields spiked
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Hedge funds look to have gotten their timing very wrong, piling into bullish short-term Treasury bets ahead of some of the steepest yield spikes in years.

Leveraged funds built up bullish bets on two-year Treasury futures and Eurodollar contracts at the fastest pace on record over the last four weeks, based on a rolling average of the latest data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The net long positions stood near the highest since 2015 last Tuesday and were likely loss-making given that two-year yields surged from 0.27% to as high as 0.56% over that four-week period.