The latest Commitment of Traders (CoT) report from the ICE platform shows that, by the end of last week, investment funds expanded their net long holdings (long holdings – short holdings) to a substantial 96.5 million allowances, marking a 3.4% weekly increase.

Market data indicates that, as of last Friday, speculative traders added 3.2 million allowances to their long positions, bringing the total to 125.1 million, while short positions rose only marginally—by 0.6 million allowances—to 28.6 million.

This sharp build-up in bullish exposure represents the largest since 2021, when net longs briefly exceeded 100 million allowances, and comes after a short pause in the previous week, which had seen a modest decline.

Interestingly, the sentiment captured in ICE’s report was not mirrored by market performance, an uncommon divergence. Typically, speculative positioning moves in line with EUA price dynamics, yet despite the strong increase in fund exposure (+3.4%), carbon prices remained nearly flat, edging up by just 0.28%.