Behind the bull carnival, does the "black history" of institutional holdings suggest that a turning point is coming?

On October 31, the CFTC released the latest CME Bitcoin Futures Weekly Report (October 21-October 27). During the statistical period, BTC continued to rise sharply. On the basis of the considerable increase it had achieved before, the BTC price once again achieved a single-week increase of more than US$2,000 during the latest statistical period. The market optimism further fermented with the continued rise in prices.

The total holdings (total open positions) increased from 10,896 to 12,665 in the latest data. This value has continued to rise for the fourth consecutive week and hit a new high since the week of August 18. Although there is still a certain gap from the historical high, if the recent growth trend is followed, the possibility of refreshing the existing historical high in the next few weeks is not low. The continued rise in currency prices has a very obvious stimulating effect on market participation.

From the perspective of sub-item data, the long positions held by larger brokers fell from 874 to 770. Although the long positions fell from the historical high, the short positions remained at 0. This is the third consecutive week that such accounts have handed in 0 short positions. The last time there was a similar three-week period of no short positions was in June 2019. Since the CFTC weekly report officially covered CME Bitcoin futures positions, this is only the fourth time this has happened. Judging from the position status, the strong bullish attitude of large institutions has not shown any signs of wavering.

However, one thing that needs to be noted is that the market has experienced phased turning points after several brokerage accounts had 0 short positions for more than three consecutive weeks. Last year, the emergence of this phenomenon even announced the end of a bull market that lasted for several months. Whether history will repeat itself is still an unknown, but in the market fever environment, risk control thinking should not be forgotten.

In the latest statistical period, the long position of leveraged fund accounts increased from 4558 to 5462, and the short position increased from 7741 to 9010. The leveraged fund short position hit a record high. However, judging from the proportion of numerical changes, the increase in long positions in the latest statistical period is more significant. This shows that leveraged funds have a strong willingness to increase their positions in the short term. As the main position "group" of leveraged funds on the CME platform, this large-scale stimulation of market enthusiasm is no less than the impact of large institutions' 0 short positions.

In terms of large-scale holdings, long positions increased from 1926 to 2579, and short positions increased from 2320 to 2578. The simultaneous increase in long and short positions of large-scale accounts in the latest statistical period continued the recent trend of such accounts being synchronized with leveraged funds. However, for the data of such accounts, the more interesting point is that the net short positions maintained by such accounts in the past three statistical periods were "overturned" in the latest statistical period. Although the long positions of such accounts at the end of the latest statistical period only achieved a very slight advantage over the short positions, this reversal from net short to net long showed the impact of the continued rise in the price of the currency on market sentiment. The current bullish enthusiasm in the market is already quite high.

In terms of retail positions, long positions increased from 3072 to 3540, and short positions increased from 369 to 478. The two-week continuous net long position adjustment of retail accounts has temporarily come to an end, but considering that the long positions of such accounts have hit a nearly 10-week high, the "impact" of the slight increase in short positions is limited.