Hedge funds increased their bets against the dollar to a massive $28.6bn (£17.1bn) in advance of Ben Bernanke's historic first press conference as chairman of the Federal Reserve last week. The sum held in short positions against the world's reserve currency on April 26 is the highest in more than month and $3bn more than the previous week.
The figures, released over the weekend by the Commodity Futures Trading Company (CFTC), indicate that hedge funds have made hundreds of millions of dollars from the recent collapse in the value of the greenback.
The dollar hit a three-year low against a basket of currencies on Friday, and has fallen for the last five months straight. It fell 3.8pc against the basket in April, and is down 7.5pc down so far this year.
The data shows that investors are pulling out of the dollar in favour of almost every other currency except the Japanese yen.
Camilla Sutton, chief currency strategist at Scotia Capital, said: "It's an ongoing build of short-dollar positions overall. Generally, sentiment remains very negative against the dollar." (read more)
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