Retail FX Positioning
The Retail FX Positioning panel shows where retail traders are positioned right now — how many are long vs. short each pair, how many positions are open, where they entered, and whether they're currently winning or losing. The data comes from the Myfxbook community platform and updates every hour via a server-side script.
Panel Overview
Each row in the panel represents one currency pair. The pairs are sorted by total open positions — the most actively-traded pairs appear at the top. Every row contains four distinct pieces of information:
Myfxbook Data
Myfxbook is a third-party platform where retail forex traders voluntarily connect their live broker accounts for automated trade tracking and performance analysis. The "Community Outlook" feature aggregates the open positions of all connected accounts by pair and direction.
| Property | Detail |
|---|---|
| What it measures | The current open position balance of Myfxbook-connected accounts — not recent trade flow, not closed trades. |
| Update frequency | Every hour. The timestamp shown in the panel footer reflects the age of the data. |
| Sample size | Typically 10,000–60,000 open positions per major pair. EUR/USD is always the largest sample. |
| Who is included | Retail traders who connected live or demo accounts to Myfxbook. Not representative of the full retail market — see Limitations. |
| Pairs shown | 24 pairs sorted by total open positions. Majors (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY…) plus selected crosses. |
When Myfxbook data is unavailable — for example during a temporary API outage — the panel falls back to Dukascopy live sentiment, fetched directly from Dukascopy's public API. Dukascopy reflects the open positions of accounts connected to Dukascopy's platform, not Myfxbook. The panel footer label updates to indicate which source is active (Myfxbook · retail positioning vs Dukascopy · retail positioning). The aggregate statistics block (profitable %, real account %, total funds, average deposit) is only shown when Myfxbook is the active source, as Dukascopy does not expose equivalent account-level statistics.
Reading the Long / Short Bar
The horizontal bar is the first thing to look at. It splits at the point where long % meets short % — green fills from the left, red from the right.
The white vertical line on the bar marks where the current market price sits relative to the range between the average long entry and the average short entry. If the line is shifted toward the short side, price is closer to where shorts entered — useful for gauging who is under more pressure.
Open Positions Count
Below the pair symbol, the panel shows the total number of open positions tracked by Myfxbook for that pair. This number is the primary sort key — pairs with the most positions appear at the top.
Why does this matter? A sentiment reading of 80% short on AUD/NZD with 300 open positions is statistically weak. The same reading on EUR/USD with 54,000 positions carries real weight — it represents a massive, coordinated crowd exposure that market makers and institutional players will react to.
| Position count | Statistical weight | How to treat it |
|---|---|---|
| > 20,000 | High | Strong signal — enough accounts to be actionable. Major pairs only. |
| 5,000–20,000 | Medium | Useful directional context. Confirm with price action. |
| < 5,000 | Low | Treat as background noise. Sample too small for reliable inference. |
Average Entry Price
The panel shows the volume-weighted average entry price for both the long side and the short side of the dominant group. This is the price level around which retail's crowd psychology is anchored.
Example: EUR/USD longs entered at an average of 1.1691, shorts at 1.1368. If the current price is 1.1566, longs are underwater by about 125 pips while shorts are roughly breakeven. These levels act as invisible support and resistance — when price approaches the average entry of a large trapped crowd, the risk of a flush (stop-out cascade) increases significantly.
Price Distance — Trapped vs. In Profit
The small number below the percentage bar shows how far the current price is from the dominant side's average entry, in both percentage terms and pips. The color tells you the situation at a glance:
Reading the pip distance
The pip distance tells you how much pain (or gain) the crowd is sitting on. A retail crowd trapped 200 pips offside on EUR/USD is in a very different psychological state than one trapped 5 pips offside. Larger pip distances suggest:
- More pain — higher probability of eventual forced liquidation
- A larger potential stop-hunt target for institutional players
- The crowd has been holding through a significant adverse move, suggesting stubborn conviction that often breaks suddenly
Community Stats Footer
At the bottom of the panel, a compact footer shows aggregate statistics for the entire Myfxbook community sample. These numbers provide context for interpreting the pair-level data.
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Profitable % | Percentage of accounts with a positive balance right now. Above 60% is typical in trending markets. A sharp drop signals broad retail drawdown — potential capitulation signal. |
| Real accts % | Share of accounts that are live (real money) vs. demo. Higher real-account percentage makes the sentiment data more behaviorally meaningful — real money creates different psychological anchors than demo. |
| Total funds | Sum of capital across all tracked accounts. Combined with average deposit, this lets you infer approximate sample size and trader profile. |
| Avg deposit | Average account size. A higher average (e.g. $90K+) suggests a more sophisticated, semi-professional sample. Lower averages (e.g. $5K) suggest retail micro accounts where behavior is more erratic. |
| Avg P&L (gain / loss) | Average profit of winning accounts vs. average loss of losing accounts. If avg loss significantly exceeds avg gain, the community is in a losing cycle — historically a contrarian signal of near-term mean reversion. |
Contrarian Logic
Retail sentiment is most useful as a contrarian indicator. The logic: retail traders as a group tend to be wrong at extremes because they enter trends late, hold losers too long, and close winners too early. When the crowd is overwhelmingly positioned one way, the easy money in that direction has typically already been made.
| Sentiment reading | Contrarian interpretation | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| 70–80% Long | Moderate contrarian short bias. Crowd is bullish but not at extreme. Watch for trend exhaustion signals. | Medium |
| > 80% Long | Strong contrarian short signal. Historically precedes meaningful reversals, especially combined with trapped status. | High |
| 45–55% either side | No useful signal. Defer to COT, rate differentials, and price action. | None |
| 70–80% Short | Moderate contrarian long bias. Crowded shorts suggest limited further downside without a catalyst. | Medium |
| > 80% Short | Strong contrarian long signal. Extreme short positioning often precedes sharp short squeezes. | High |
The highest-quality setups arise when retail sentiment extremes align with institutional COT positioning in the opposite direction — retail crowded one way, smart money positioned the other. That is the core confluence signal the panel is designed to help you identify.
Limitations
- Sample bias. Only Myfxbook-connected accounts are included. Active, platform-engaged traders may behave differently from the broader retail population. The sample skews toward more engaged, technically-oriented traders.
- Not institutional. This data says nothing about hedge fund, bank, or proprietary-desk positioning. For institutional positioning, use the COT panel in the terminal.
- Positions, not flow. Sentiment shows the stock of currently open positions, not the rate of new orders. A high long reading might reflect stubborn longs who haven't closed yet — not fresh bullish conviction. Always check the avg entry price to distinguish.
- Up to 1-hour data lag. The data updates every hour via a scheduled server script. In fast-moving markets, the snapshot can be meaningfully stale. The panel footer shows the age of the current data.
- No causal mechanism. High retail short interest does not automatically cause a squeeze. You need a catalyst — a data release, central bank comment, or technical break — to trigger the move. Sentiment tells you the fuel is there, not when it will ignite.