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Smart Money Pulse.

An approachable read on where smart money is leaning and which markets sit at historical extremes. Written for ETF investors, not futures traders.

Issues: 34
First issue: Mar 2026
Cadence: Fridays, after the CFTC release

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Latest · W45 · Nov 6

Nasdaq Positioning Tilted Before the Slide, and Bitcoin’s Dealer Cushion Is Down to Its Thinnest

The biggest change on this week’s board is in the Nasdaq. Dealers, the market makers who take the other side of everyone else’s trades, stretched their short from a moderate reading to an elevated one on the heaviest weekly shift of any market tracked.

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Earlier issues

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October 2026
W4410·30 Dealers Have No Extreme Left, but Speculators Do in Natural Gas and the Euro Dealers, the market makers who take the other side of everyone else’s trades, have no extreme reading anywhere on the board this week. The 10-Year Treasury, last week’s lone extreme, eased back out of it.
W4310·24 One Treasury Maturity Hits a Rare Short Extreme While the Fed Meets Next Week The 10-Year Treasury is the only market on the board where dealers sit at a true extreme this week, and it got there while the 5-Year went the other way. As of Tuesday, 10-Year dealers held one of the deepest net shorts in their two-year range, while 5-Year dealers pulled back sharply from theirs.
W4210·16 The Bond Market’s Crowded Corner Moved to the 5-Year As of Tuesday, Treasury positioning had found a new pressure point. Last week the 10-Year was the one maturity still pinned at an extreme; this week its dealers eased back a tier while dealers in the 5-Year Treasury added to their short at an unusually fast clip, landing near the bottom of their two-year range.
W4110·10 Bond Dealers Stepped Back From the Edge, Five Days Before the Inflation Report The most crowded corner of the Treasury market emptied out faster than it filled. As of Tuesday, dealers in the 2-Year and 5-Year Treasury had pulled well away from the bottom of their two-year ranges; the 5-Year dropped two full tiers in a single week on the biggest rates move on the board, with no Fed meeting or options expiration nearby to explain it.
W4010·02 Treasury Dealers Hit Bottom in Three Maturities at Once, and Then Yields Ran to a 2002 High As of Tuesday, dealers in the 2-Year, 5-Year and 10-Year Treasury all sat at the very bottom of their two-year ranges. Last week only the 5-Year was there; this week the 2-Year and the 10-Year stepped down to join it, and the 10-Year got there on the most unusual one-week dealer short build on the board.
September 2026
W3909·25 The Crowded Bond Bet Moved Into the Part of the Market Your Bond Fund Owns For weeks the tension in Treasuries sat at the edges of the maturity range, in the 2-Year and the 10-Year. This week it moved to the middle.
W3809·19 Rate Desks Went to an Extreme, Then the Tape Rallied Without Them The heaviest money of the week went into the 2-Year Treasury. Dealer desks dropped two full steps, from a middling short position down to the bottom of their two-year range (z=-2.04), on one of the biggest position shifts on the board.
W3709·11 The Bond Desks Dug In Six Days Before the Fed The single most stretched position anywhere in this week’s report is in 10-Year Treasuries, where dealer desks pushed their short to the very bottom of its two-year range (z=-2.29) for a fourth straight week in the same direction. The big asset managers hold the other side of that trade near the top of their own range.
W3609·04 The Most Lopsided Bet on the Board Is Now in Small Caps For much of the past month the crowded corners of this data sat in bonds and the dollar. The sharpest one-sided book in the report now sits in small caps, where the professional desks hold a genuine outright long near the very top of their two-year range while the hedge fund crowd has pressed a short to the bottom of its own, the most lopsided speculative position on the board.