"Sell everything in Europe"! The third-largest sell-off in ten years, with funds retreating across the board.

Multiple-party data shows that European assets are going through one of the most intense selloff waves in nearly a decade, with institutional investors cutting their exposure to Europe at an extreme pace.

According to Goldman Sachs Prime Brokerage data, the net selling amount for European assets last month hit the largest month-over-month decline since March 2025, ranking third-highest among the past ten years. The ratio of short books to long books reached as high as 2.2 to 1.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan data shows that the European composite positioning indicator has fallen to the third-lowest level since 2015. The standard deviation has touched below -1.5, and the 4-week positioning change has dropped further below -2 standard deviations.

This figure suggests that the net short pressure in Europe’s current positioning is an extreme case within the historical distribution of the past decade. Similar readings have only appeared after a few historical moments of market stress.

JPMorgan data further indicates that, measured by the Z-score of 1-month positioning change, the CTA group’s de-risking in European assets has reached the most extreme level in the entire history of that data series.

As a representative of trend-following strategies, CTAs’ concentrated exits often have self-reinforcing effects, creating additional downside pressure on the market from a technical perspective.

JPMorgan’s positioning team points out that, if you look across the three categories of hedge funds, CTAs (commodity trading advisers), and pure long funds, European overall positioning is already at a “very low level.”

Signs of capital withdrawal are evident not only in stock positioning, with the foreign exchange market also corroborating a systemic risk-avoidance posture.

The skew in the euro options market continues to fall, indicating that options market participants have broadly shifted to betting on a decline in the euro.

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