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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
Issues
Page 2 of 4- August 2026
- W3508·28 The Bond Market’s Smart Money Just Reached for Its Deepest Short in Two Years For weeks the tension in this data lived in stocks and the dollar. This week it moved decisively into one place: the long end of the bond market.
- W3408·25 Everyone’s Watching Bonds. The Real Crowd Is in the Dollar. Two stories have dominated this data lately, and both are now settled background: the month-long tech standoff in the Nasdaq unwound, and the tension slid into short-term Treasuries right as PCE approaches. Neither has moved since the last read.
- W3308·14 Dealers Quietly Added Shorts Just Before the Record Here is the split worth knowing about this week. As of Tuesday the big dealers were leaning defensive in the two markets a normal portfolio cares most about, and then the market did the opposite.
- W3208·07 The Tech Face-Off Just Hit a Two-Year Extreme The crowding that drained out of the market after the Fed’s July meeting came roaring back this week, and it landed right on top of tech. On the Nasdaq, dealers and hedge funds are now dug in at opposite extremes, the widest gap anywhere on the board, and both pushed further into the trade on the heaviest one-week repositioning in this entire dataset.
- July 2026
- W3107·31 After the Fed, the Crowded Bets Cleared Out. Two-Year Treasuries Didn’t. For most of July the big players were piled into the same handful of trades. This week, with the Fed’s decision finally out of the way, most of that crowding drained off.
- W3007·24 The Smart Money Dug In Harder Right Before the Fed Here is the tension in this week’s data: the market sold off hard, and the big players answered by leaning further into their bets, not backing away from them. As of Tuesday, Nasdaq dealers had covered almost their entire short and sat at the very top of their two-year range (z=+2.02), about as undefensive as they have been in two years, while hedge funds on the other side pressed their Nasdaq short to rock bottom, the most crowded reading anywhere on the board.
- W2907·17 The Most Crowded Bet in the Market Just Started Working On Tuesday, hedge funds finished building the most stretched position anywhere on the board: a Nasdaq short at the absolute bottom of its two-year range of net positioning (z=-2.06), the only outright extreme among dealers and hedge funds in this week’s data. Dealers leaned the opposite way, climbing to the top of their own range, the least short they have been in nearly two years.
- W2807·10 Tech Cooled Off. The Bond Market Didn’t. For two weeks running the story here was the tech showdown. This week the big players stood down almost everywhere: Nasdaq dealers stepped back from their record reading, hedge funds trimmed some of their most crowded positions and most of the board drifted toward normal.
- W2707·06 The Nasdaq Is Now the Market’s Biggest Staring Contest The tech setup we flagged last week did not fade. It escalated.
- June 2026
- W2606·26 The Great S&P Short Just Quietly Vanished For a month the biggest story in stocks was a record bet against the S&P 500 by hedge funds, a wound-up position that was supposed to detonate into a rally the moment the market turned higher. This week it ended, just not the way anyone scripted.