On August 12, trend-following investors' short bets on global bonds reached a record level, making this week's US inflation report unusually important. According to data from UBS, commodity trading advisors (CTAs), which aim to profit from price trends across various assets, tripled their underweight bond positions in July compared with two weeks earlier. Since then, these bets have remained steady. If the upcoming US consumer and producer price indexes spur Treasury prices higher, these CTA trades would face the risk of losses. According to strategist Nicolas Le Roux, ahead of the inflation data, for every 1-basis-point move in the 10-year Treasury yield, the scale of CTA profit/loss is about $300 million, the largest exposure since UBS began compiling the data in 1990.
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